At some point in his career, Fernando Botero chose not to change the pictorial style he had created and which already characterized him; on the contrary, he dedicated his life to perfecting it. As this was his priority, he gave priority to art over political commitment.

Nevertheless, as a painter, he did not deprive himself of investing energy and talent in historical characters and situations of a profound social and political character. La familia presidencial (1967) and Retrato oficial de la junta militar (1976) leave no doubt as to what Botero thought of Latin America’s rulers.

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Writer Juan Carlos Botero summarizes it in two sentences: “it is difficult to find a plastic artist who has been more inclement with the political class and with the tyrants of the continent than Fernando Botero”. “The satire in several of his canvases is evident and that is why the country’s authorities with their leaders, military, bishops, priests, politicians and ministers are painted with humor and undeniable irony” [1].

Fernando Botero developed his particular figurative style from an early mastery of drawing and its techniques. Like Picasso and other great painters, he was, first and foremost, a draftsman of superb quality. “Drawing is almost everything. It is the painter’s identity, his style, his conviction, and then color is just a gift to drawing”, the Master stated in an interview.

Botero’s unwavering defense of drawing and figuration as an essential tool of painting was, in itself, a political choice that deserves to be highly appreciated.

This defense entailed a distance from conceptual and abstract art, which in many of its representatives ended up giving rise to endless speculation and the elusion or denial of social facts. Botero is the opposite of Jackson Pollock, who asked not to worry about finding in his works a referent of external reality because they did not have one.

That in Botero a political perspective of society was constant is also evidenced by his view of European history. Botero painted the coup general Francisco Franco (1986) as an empty, clumsy and secondary character, despite his omnipresent 35-year dictatorship in Spain.

In Louis XVI with his family in prison (1968) he condensed in an image, which seems to fade in time, the collapse and violent defeat inflicted on the feudal monarchies by the French revolution.

Fernando Botero maintained that “art is a permanent accusation”. However, in his creations, the accusation does not always have the same intensity. There is a quantitative -and above all qualitative- difference in the tone and dimension of the denunciation between the few and scattered allegorical works on European events, on the one hand, and his series on the violence in Colombia or the more than 80 drawings and oil paintings on the torture of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, located near Baghdad, on the other.

The Abu Ghraib series constitutes, as Jack Rasmussen said, a powerful combination of the best art with a clear political message.

The invasion of Iraq, led by the United States, began on March 19, 2003. In June of the same year, the first reports of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib became known; an extensive report in November of the same year went unnoticed.

Only in 2004, when renowned journalists such as Dan Rather and Seymour Hersh (the same journalist who in 1969 denounced the My Lai massacre in Vietnam) published incontrovertible evidence of the aberrant torture in the Iraqi prison, did American and international public opinion begin to pay attention.

Fernando Botero read Hersh’s article in The New Yorker and felt “surprised, hurt and angry, like everyone else. The more I read, the more motivated, angry and upset I became” (see link here).

For the painter, the hypocrisy was intolerable: “…that the Americans were torturing prisoners in the same prison where they said the tyrant they came to overthrow was torturing them” (see link here).

Fernando Botero began working with passion for long days in his Paris studio during the second half of 2004 and did not stop until a long year later.

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Using as reference stories and multiple photographs taken by prison guards and made public, the painter captured with originality and in his particular style the brutality of the deprivations, the impalements and other unimaginable sexual violence, the aggressions with prison dogs. In short, multiple old and new macabre techniques of interrogation.

In real life, this grotesque and inhumane torture protocol was adapted by James Mitchell and John Jessen, two American psychologists hired for millions of dollars for that purpose, with the knowledge and authorization of the top brass of the US government.

This manual of horror and extreme violence was applied mercilessly and even with delight and glee, as can be seen in some photographs, by military men and women under the command of the prison director, General Janis Karpinski.

The first exhibitions of the Abu Ghraib series were made by Botero in European countries during 2005, where they received great attention. In the United States, no one initially dared to present the Colombian master’s monumental work on Abu Ghraib.

Perhaps because the establishment and those in power felt that Botero was right when he said that, “when the newspapers and people stop talking about it, my paintings will be there to remind us of an unacceptable moment in American history”.

It took a year for the Marlborough Gallery in New York to exhibit a selection of works from the series in November 2006. Finally, 43 paintings were exhibited at UC Berkeley in February and March 2007, and the entire series opened to the public in November 2007 in Washington DC.

It was in this city that, very early in the morning, I rushed to the American University museum to see the exhibition. I was soon so absorbed in front of each painting that I was grateful that they were numbered: Abu Ghraib 17, Abu Ghraib 18, Abu Ghraib 19… and that a lady interrupted to ask me if I was a painter (??).

Then I saw Master Botero in the center of the hall, unaccompanied, observing with interest the behavior of the visitors. I approached him with shyness and respect and he welcomed me with simplicity and affability. We talked for a few minutes.

I thanked him for his courage in recreating, as no one could imagine and in all its magnitude, both the degradation and cruelty of the invading army and the dignity of the prisoners in the face of humiliation and suffering.

Above all, for doing it almost alone, barely shielded by the international recognition of his work, at a time when so many artists and politicians maintained a convenient and cowardly silence. Moreover, for daring to bring the exhibition to the very seat of the U.S. government, just a few miles from the White House.

Master Botero said that without freedom of the press in the United States it would not have been possible to know what had happened in the first place and that he understood art as a particular way of making “the facts” more visible.

He believed that, if the work was good and conveyed even the suffering with beauty, it would be a perennial testimony, even if by itself it could not change anything. Picasso’s Guernica is the great painting of the 20th century and it did not prevent Franco’s dictatorship! and he emphasized: “I could not remain silent”.

As I said goodbye, I asked him to sign the postcard with one of the paintings (Abu Ghraib 67) that the museum had printed for the occasion and I expressed my wishes for the exhibition to have many visitors. He replied, I didn’t know whether seriously or jokingly, “Yes! I hope even President Bush, George Bush, comes!”

[1] Botero, J.C., El arte de Fernando Botero (2010). Bogotá, Editorial Planeta, p 28.

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