Adam and Eve By Fernando Botero

Adam and Eve which painted by Fernando Botero, was another work reflected his painting style directly and obviously. Everyone would impress by the shape of characters and elements in his paintings, all of which are strong, large and fat with exaggerated. Contrary to the pursuit of being thin in contemporary, Botero provides us a totally different aesthetic standard, that is “fat is innocent, but another sense of beauty.”

Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve

This painting sets Adam and Eve in the Bible as the theme, snake and tree of good and evil also appear. Both the man and woman who stand in front of a tree are fat and naked with their back to us, while the snake twines round the big tree, attracting Eve to eat fruits in the tree of good and evil as what the Bible described. In this painting, we can feel a strong sense of three dimensional from the line of naked body and the snake was painted red color, because in western country color red represents evil and danger, which portrayed the story vividly. We can see that Botero was so meticulous about the use of colors, never excessive abuse nor excessive render the color. That is why we are very difficult to see the projection. He always relies on improving the image contrast and reflection so as to achieve the purpose of modeling.

Botero once said, “What important for me is that every one who sees my work should recognize it is Botero’s.” For him, art is the need to express his inner world. As we see now, he achieved it.