The torture at Abu Ghraib by Botero
Exposition: "Fernando Botero. Beyond Forms"
In May 2004, Colombian artist Fernando Botero discovered, via the American magazine The New Yorker, the account of the torture inflicted by the US army on Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison (in Iraq), which gave rise to an international public outcry. The unprecedented violence of these acts shocked the artist all the more because they were committed by an extremely powerful country that, in its international policy, sets itself up as a defender of human rights.
On the plane back to France, he began to make sketches inspired by these events, then continued to draw and paint in his Paris studio: "It became an obsession," said the artist."For 14 months, it was all I worked on, all I thought about". The result is a series of 60 works made up of paintings and drawings that the artist offered to the University of Berkeley in California in 2007, to keep the memory of these acts alive in the USA.
www.visitmons.co.uk/agenda/mons-biennial-of-art-and-cultu...
Location: BAM (Fine Arts Museum) Rue Neuve 8, Mons, Belgium
The torture at Abu Ghraib by Botero
Exposition: "Fernando Botero. Beyond Forms"
In May 2004, Colombian artist Fernando Botero discovered, via the American magazine The New Yorker, the account of the torture inflicted by the US army on Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison (in Iraq), which gave rise to an international public outcry. The unprecedented violence of these acts shocked the artist all the more because they were committed by an extremely powerful country that, in its international policy, sets itself up as a defender of human rights.
On the plane back to France, he began to make sketches inspired by these events, then continued to draw and paint in his Paris studio: "It became an obsession," said the artist."For 14 months, it was all I worked on, all I thought about". The result is a series of 60 works made up of paintings and drawings that the artist offered to the University of Berkeley in California in 2007, to keep the memory of these acts alive in the USA.
www.visitmons.co.uk/agenda/mons-biennial-of-art-and-cultu...
Location: BAM (Fine Arts Museum) Rue Neuve 8, Mons, Belgium