Fernando Botero’s “Abu Ghraib” – A Conversation with the Artist

University of California, Berkeley, August 21, 2007

Fernando Botero, Artist in conversation with Robert Hass, Professor of English, UC Berkeley, Poet Laureate of the United States (1995-1997).

Fernando Botero, the most famous living Latin American artist, will display his Abu Ghraib paintings at the University of California, Berkeley. These 47 paintings and drawings belong to a long tradition of artistic statements against war and violence that include Goya’s Caprichos and Picasso’s Guernica.

Organized by the Center for Latin American Studies, these paintings have never been displayed in a public institution in the United States. The exhibit was “proposed to many museums in the U.S,” according to the artist, but all declined to show it.