The story of Gabriel García Márquez, portrayed by Fernando Botero in the 1960s

I can’t say I’m a writer. Gabriel Garcia Marquez and a painter fernando botero they were friends. At some point, their figures overlapped each time they met. These two geniuses, one born by the sea and the other near the mountains, became the most important figures of their generation. Each crossed borders in its own way, carrying with it the soul and essence of Colombia.

One of the most memorable anecdotes that unites these men, one the greatest writer in the history of this country and the other an equal figure in the plastic arts, dates back to September 12, 1952. Barranquilla’s El Gerardo newspaper devoted itself to the graphic work of a young artist, in which García Márquez accompanied a book with a poem by the Antioquian poet Carlos Saavedra. hometown leaves. At the time, Botero was just a 20-year-old boy, and Gabo was a talented reporter around 25.

In his column, García Márquez praised the freshness of Botero’s strokes, which seemed naive and childish, but was surprised and perplexed by the maturity of his conception. The contrast between Saavedra’s torn poetry and the bright, gentle worldview emanating from Botero’s paintings was striking.

“Perhaps if I had to say something too quickly that risks turning into nonsense, it would be Castro Saavedra’s ripped and awful singing; That bright and calm world view seen in the paintings of Fernando Botero. “Antiochians and young people are both nourished by beans and corn, and both pursue the same goal through different paths and with distinctly different elements and resources,” the authors wrote. hundred years of solitude.

Eight years later, García Márquez and Botero would collaborate more directly. On January 24, 1960, the Nobel Prize in Literature winner published a novel titled: tuesday nap In the Sunday reading supplement of El Tiempo newspaper.A story that will later be included in a book big mom’s funeralfeaturing illustrations by talented artists.

In the first sequence, he captured the girl and woman with whom the story begins. Two people, wearing mourning clothes with serious expressions, are searching the graves of murdered loved ones in a town in the Banana region. The voluminous contours that would characterize Botero’s aesthetic in later decades were already beginning to take shape in this illustration.

According to an article published by the Gabo Center, Botero’s second illustration focuses on a scene in which lonely widow Rebecca kills thief Carlos Centeno by shooting him in the nose with an old-fashioned revolver.

This was not the first time an artist illustrated a literary text, nor would it be the last. A highly skilled man, he knew how to translate the words of poets and essayists into discontinued magazines. lampunder the direction of the editor. Benjamin Villegas; his work has graced the covers of several editions of García Márquez’s works, and in 2023 one of his paintings accompanied the Peruvian’s latest novel. Mario Vargas Llosa.

Newspaper readers at the time had the privilege of enjoying the meeting of these two giants before fame and success separated them. Today, the two are legends of Latin American art and culture. García Márquez left behind valuable works in the field of literature, and Botero left behind valuable works in the field of plastic arts. Without a doubt, they are and will continue to be two of his greatest artistic figures of the 20th century.