You paint what you know best; what you went through as a teenager and child. My world is the one I got to know in Medellin; I never paint anything else other than that.
Fernando BoteroRead
In a photo, you just do a click, but in art you have to put in so much energy. This concentration of energy and attention says something that other media cannot say.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Creating art requires deep effort and focus, unlike simply taking a photo.
Fernando Botero emphasizes the difference between mere photography and the creation of art, highlighting that true artistic expression demands considerable energy and concentration. This level of dedication allows the artist to convey messages and emotions that transcends what can be captured by a simple click of a camera, showcasing the unique power of art as a medium of communication.
Themes
ArtCreationEnergyExpressionPhotography
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of art education, one could use this quote to illustrate the depth required in artistic endeavors.
More from Fernando Botero
All quotes →Nobody ever told me, 'Art is this.' This was good luck in a way because I would have had to spend half of my life forgetting everything that I had been told, which is what happens with most students in schools of fine arts.
Fernando BoteroRead
I love my country, and it hurts not to be able to see my country, as I did for so many years. I hope that I will one day be able to live in a peaceful Colombia.
Fernando BoteroRead
An artist is born like a priest is born. If they are born an artist, I would tell them art is not a game: it is something very serious which completely requires everything you have to give.
Fernando BoteroRead
I was drawing a mandolin, and I made the sound hole very small, which made the mandolin look gigantic. I saw that making the details small made the form monumental. So in my figures, the eyes, the mouth are all small, and the exterior form is huge.
Fernando BoteroRead
When you start a painting, it is somewhat outside you. At the conclusion, you seem to move inside the painting.
Fernando BoteroRead
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Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.
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People ask me why my figures have to be so black. There are a lot of reasons. First, the blackness is a rhetorical device. When we talk about ourselves as a people and as a culture, we talk about black history, black culture, black music. That's the rhetorical position we occupy.
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I don't think writers choose the genre, the genre chooses us. I wrote out of the wish to create order out of disorder, the liking of a pattern.
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I am big. It's the pictures that got small.
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Authorities in Rabat believe that if we create a Moroccan character, even in a work of fiction, we are responsible for the image of Moroccan women.
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The best thing that ever happened to me is that nothing happened in writing. I ended up working for engineering companies, and that's where I found my material, in the everyday struggle between capitalism and grace. Being broke and tired, you don't come home your best self.
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