Fernando Botero Manzanas (Apples) 1957–58
As a young man in Medellín, Fernando Botero supported his early artistic aspirations by publishing drawings in newspapers. In the early 1950s, he moved to Madrid to study at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando and later traveled to Paris and Florence to learn old master techniques, including fresco painting.
During the 1950s, the artist experimented with an expressionistic style, evident in the heavy brushstroke and loose, painterly quality of Manzanas (Apples). Manzanas is exemplary of this early period when Botero explored the element of distortion, though in a different way from what would eventually become his recognizable style. Botero painted a series of unconventional works based on the Mona Lisa and the painter Velázquez, where the figurative element is flattened against the background and rendered as barely recognizable. That effect also can be seen in Manzanas, an almost monstrous and grotesque mass of forms and color.
Identification
Title
Manzanas (Apples)
Production Date
1957–58
Object Number
2012.22
Credit Line
Collection Pérez Art Museum Miami, gift of Jorge M. Pérez
Copyright
© Fernando Botero
https://www.pamm.org/en/artwork/2012.22
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Physical Qualities
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
50 x 51 1/2 inches
Visual Description
Manzanas (Apples) by artist Fernando Botero is an oil painting on canvas made in the years 1957-58. It measures roughly fifty by fifty-one and a half inches, almost a square a little over four feet on each side. This painting is an example of still-life, which is a genre of art that presents inanimate and usually natural objects, often a symbol of life’s simple beauty and transience. Manzanas presents a slightly aerial view of a yellow-ochre square table with rounded edges. The top of the table takes up most of the composition, almost touching the edges of the canvas. The perspective mirrors that of a person leaning directly over this table to closely study these objects as the artist did. Two table legs protrude diagonally from the bottom corners of the table, playing with the perspective and grounding the bottom of the painting. The background is painted in contrasting raw black and brown strokes which evenly frame and balance the composition.
Atop this table are ten round fruits painted in various tones of yellow ochre, raw umber, and burnt sienna. Without reference to the title of this painting, these fruits are ambiguous and can resemble apples, pears, or apricots. The fruits are arranged in small groupings throughout the space of the table. In the lower left corner, three fruits sit on a small white plate. To the right of that, two fruits are directly on the table. In the very center of the table, three fruits are placed inside what appears to be a wooden bowl, with two other fruits on the diagonal edges of the container, as if they have just rolled free from their confines.
Behind this bowl is a dark gray shape that appears to be a water pitcher. A white stripe on the bottom of the pitcher helps to balance out the white contrast of the plate diagonally across from it. Obscured by the pitcher and the fruit is a long stick painted in dark gray, yellow ochre and burnt sienna. The stick resembles a cane or a walking stick laid across the table surface, with a small perpendicular handle at its end.
Overall, the nearly square format of neutral colors and similarly shaped objects gives this painting a feeling of balance, calm, and harmony. The simple subject matter of fruit on a table further illustrates this moment of peace.
