SHARING WITH ME

Although I started in the wrong direction, this time around the GPS on my telephone did put me right fast - all I had to do was cross the road and a few blocks down, there was the Gaumont centre of Art. Although I have certainly been here, it did not seem to be very familiar. But the artists’ names certainly were. Botero and Picasso. Here was the page I had seen in Paris.  Pierrette reminded me that there had been a huge exhibition of Botero’s sculptures on the Champs Elysées. I looked up to see when - 1992. Unbelievable!   Despite very different origins, lives, and careers, the two artists share common geographical and cultural points of reference. In his youth, Fernando Botero (born in 1932 in Colombia)) took an interest in the work of Pablo Picasso (1881–1973 - Spanish).  He admired his rich palette and the monumentality and sensuality of the forms. But Botero particularly admired Picasso’s ‘nonconformism’ (sic). In both their works, the distortion of the human body and volu