Long before he became one of the world’s best-known Latin American artists, Fernando Botero sold his first work for two packets of cigarettes.
More than seven decades later, and almost three years after his death at the age of 91, that youthful watercolour is returning to the art market in a sale in Bogotá.
The work, titled ‘La Plegaria’ and painted in 1949, is regarded as the first piece Botero sold in his career and forms part of an auction organised by Bogotá Auctions on 21 May, which will also offer more than 120 works of modern and contemporary Colombian and Latin American art.
Botero was one of the most influential and instantly recognisable Latin American artists of the past century.
As the auction house explains (source in Spanish), the watercolour belongs to the formative period of the Colombian painter and sculptor. “In this piece, the pursuit of volume that would come to characterise Botero’s later work is not yet evident,” the house notes.
The painting portrays an elderly peasant praying, his hands clasped to his mouth and his eyes closed. Behind him, a woman shelters a child while lifting towards the sky a gaze filled with fear and dread.
A history of violence
Botero painted the work just a year after the assassination of Colombian Liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a killing that unleashed a wave of political violence in Colombia. At the time, the artist was still a teenager of about 17 and a long way from the international recognition he would earn decades later with his monumental figures and exaggerated volumes.
The piece was then exchanged with Efrén Ossa, regarded as a pioneer of insurance law in Colombia. The anecdote stands in stark contrast to the prices Botero’s work has reached on the international art market, where his paintings and sculptures have sold for millions of euros.
The auction will also include the oil on canvas ‘Girl with Flowers’ (1960), from a transitional period towards the style that would ultimately define the Colombian artist.
In addition, works by other leading names in Latin American art such as Alejandro Obregón, Débora Arango, Beatriz González, Luis Caballero, Ana Mercedes Hoyos and Óscar Muñoz will be on offer.
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