After holding major museum-level shows and an eclectic exhibition tracing the country’s history at its new headquarters in Breuer, Sotheby’s is staging its first show dedicated to a single artist. Running until September 7, the exhibition highlights the work of Colombian artist Fernando Botero and was designed in partnership with the Botero family, centered around works from their archive. Many of these works have never been shown in public before, which seems entirely in keeping with Sotheby’s “New World” experience strategy, which aims to transform each of its worldwide headquarters into a premier destination for luxury and culture designed to attract art collectors, luxury goods buyers and broader audiences who are there just to look. The Breuer location, in particular, attracted crowds more than double the size of its previous York Avenue location in the first half of 2026.
Botero’s exhibition focuses on the artist’s relationship with New York, bringing together works produced between 1960 and 1973 while he lived in Greenwich Village. “New York was deeply important to Botero. He arrived here through a tireless quest to refine his artistic language while remaining true to his creative convictions,” his family told the Observer, recounting how his journey around the world brought him to the city, beginning what became a defining chapter in his life. “In New York he met artists, critics, collectors and museums whose influence was instrumental in shaping his career. This exhibition brings that moment back into view, including works from our collection that have never been shown publicly before, and which were collected in the same city in which they were created.”
Born in Medellin, Fernando Botero was ambitious, exhibiting his work at the age of 16 and holding his first solo exhibition at just 19 while working as a painter at El Columbiano. A national art award allowed him to travel to Europe, where encounters with the Old Masters, Diego Velázquez and Vincent van Gogh, complemented influences ranging from colonial and pre-Hispanic art to Mexican murals and Colombian landscapes. After building a reputation throughout Latin America and Washington, D.C., Botero moved to Greenwich Village in the late 1950s. A studio visit by MoMA curator Dorothy Miller led to the museum’s acquisition Mona Lisa is twelve years old– the artist’s first institutional acquisition – which helped connect him to dealers including Pierre Levay, Claude Bernard and Ernst Beyeler. He went on to produce major works such as: Pope Leo X (after Raphael) and Presidential familywhile his 1972 debut at the Marlboro Gallery confirmed that his pictorial style could succeed even in the New York art scene dominated by Ab-Ex.
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“Botero in New York“ |
On offer at Sotheby’s are 25 paintings and sculptures that chart this important period in Botero’s practice and highlight how he stuck to his artistic vision at a time when almost everyone was moving in the opposite direction. Confronting what he described as the “dictatorship of abstract art”, and largely indifferent to prevailing aesthetic trends and contemporary ideals of beauty, Botero developed his distinctly humanistic and deeper visual language of rounded forms, sensual female bodies and expansive, ordinary urban figures. While critics sometimes dismiss his expansive characters as unfashionable or overly accessible, audiences respond to their warmth, humor, sensuality and unmistakable sense of scale – qualities that have come to define “Boterismo.”
Included in the gallery is Mona Lisa at Los Tres Añosa painting closely associated with Mona Lisa is twelve years old. The painting offers a satirical reinterpretation of Leonardo’s famous sitter in an unmistakably potter’s visual lexicon. A more dynamic canvas from 1959 is also on display, The apotheosis of Ramón Hoyosdesigned as a tribute to the famous Colombian cyclist Ramon Hoyos Vallejo, five-time winner of the Vuelta a Colombia, through an epic composition rooted in art history and referencing pre-Columbian art. Other highlights include picnic (1973), in which Botero’s visual language expands to landscape; Inspired by Van Gogh sunflower (1977); And fertile Still life with watermelon (1976), which reflects his enduring devotion to the great masters who came before him.
Botero’s market saw a marked acceleration after the pandemic, momentum that continued to strengthen after his death in 2023. Artnet reported that his annual auction sales rose from $9.7 million in 2020 to $21.2 million in 2023, then reaching $25.1 million by November 2024. Anna De Stasi, global head of Latin American art at Sotheby’s, said that recent auction results clearly confirm this strength. Bigger. Works like horse They have achieved prices in excess of $4 million at Sotheby’s, while the paintings have consistently achieved multi-million dollar results at auctions. Even in the most selective market, solid examples regularly exceed their estimates, underscoring the continuing demand for museum-quality works.
Today, the market for Botero’s work is mature but increasingly eclectic, according to Di Stasi. “High-profile businesses continue to perform strongly, especially those with clear quality, scale, strong provenance and relevance to their key periods.” She adds that demand tends to focus on master oils from the late 1960s and 1970s, along with signature subjects such as social scenes, portraits, musicians and still lifes. High-quality bronzes also remain in demand, benefiting from their public exposure, with many being installed as public sculptures around the world, while smaller versions are widely traded at auctions.
Botero’s pieces are no longer purchased only through specialized sales channels in Latin America, and the buyer base for his works has become fully globalized. While Latin American art collectors remain important, there is strong artist market participation in the United States and Europe, with increasing interest from the Middle East and Asia. “At the upper end, prices have been boosted by recent auction results, confirming continued international demand,” De Stasi explains.
Botero consistently ranks among the most instantly recognizable Latin American artists, yet his auction record remains modest compared to those of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and even some lesser-known figures of the post-war period. Its current highest gross is $5.132 million MusiciansIt will be sold at Christie’s New York in 2023.
The fact that his widespread global recognition has not translated into eight-figure auction prices can be attributed in part to the artist’s extensive output across paintings, drawings, bronzes and editions, as well as critical resistance to the accessibility and replication of his images. The frequent presence of nudity in his work may have limited its reception in some markets, especially in countries like the United States, where a new (and contradictory) puritanism had taken hold. Botero’s estates, art galleries and auction houses are now actively recasting work through exhibitions and secondary market offerings, to enhance their market valuation and expand their collector base.
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