Colombian artist Fernando Botero on his Abu Ghraib anti-torture drawings

Translated from Dutch news agency ANP:

Botero: Abu Ghraib drawings: a permanent accusation

THE HAGUE – Colombian artist Fernando Botero says that his statues which will be on Lange Voorhout street in The Hague this summer, are not intended as statements.

However, his Abu Ghraib drawings, exhibited in the Escher museum [Lange Voorhout 74] in the Voorhout Royal Palace are an accusation against the horrors in the prison in Iraq. …

In the Escher museum are fifty recent drawings by the world-famous artist, including eleven ones showing the torture in Abu Ghraib jail. …

Anger

Even in the drawings which he made about torture and humiliation in the infamous Abu Ghraib jail, they return, the voluptuous shapes.

However, here threatened by dogs, covered in blood, hanging upside down on a rope.

Botero made his first sketch in this series spontaneously, from anger, when, in an airplane, he read a newspaper article on the horrors.

He does not want to compare himself to Picasso.

However, it is his painting of the bombing of Guernica which keeps the memory alive.

Similarly, Botero hopes that his Abu Ghraib drawings as well will be a ,,permanent accusation”.

When Botero was young, he was dismissed from art school, for writing a thesis on “dangerous subversive” Pablo Picasso.

Ariel Dorfman play on Picasso: here.

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