The Time Warner Center is located on Columbus Circle at the southwest
corner of Central Park. It is the first
major building to be completed in Manhattan after the September 11, 2001. The
buildings consists of two 80 story towers with
a bridge like atrium between them. Its
scale is huge: a $1.7 billion investment bringing a major upscale shopping
mall, a 5-star hotel, offices for 1,700 Time Warner employees and other
companies, television studios, a jazz concert hall, residential apartments and
more... The Shops at Columbus Circle represent some of the finest shopping in
New York City. You can read the story
about the complex here. 
As soon as you walk into the Time Warner Center you are
confronted by this very large couple who are not shy and clearly here to shop
for some designer clothing. The
twelve-foot statues were created by the Colombian artist Fernando Botero. Fernando Botero was born in 1932 in Colombia .
In 1944 he took bullfighting classes with his uncle at La Macarena, the
Medellin bullfighting ring. After a close call with a bull, Fernando decided to
give up bullfighting and focus on what most interested him as a child:
painting.  |
| Botero. Adam and Eve |
In 1948, Fernando Botero
exhibited his work for the first time in his hometown. In 1951, Botero moved to
Bogota. With the money he earned from
the award and paintings he sold, Fernando Botero headed to Spain, to study at
the Academia de Arte de San Fernando art school in Madrid.
His signature style, also known as "Boterismo",
depicts people and figures in large, exaggerated volume, which can represent
criticism or humor, depending on the piece. He is considered the most
recognized and quoted living artist from Latin America, and his art can be
found in highly visible places around the world.
 |
| Botero. President family. |
“My father was a
traveling salesman,” Botero said. “He died when I was five. He sold clothes and
other things and he traveled on a mule. My mother was a seamstress. When I told
my mother that I wanted to be an artist, she said, ‘You’re going to die of
hunger. Some people love my work, some
people hate it. You can’t be liked by
everybody. There has been opposition in some places. I represent the opposite
of what is happening in art today. But I don’t complain. It hasn’t hurt my
career. I’m happy to have the success I have had.”
 |
| Botero. Adam and Eve. Monaco. |
Botero is one of the
world’s wealthiest artists. His paintings and sculptures sell for millions of
dollars and are in the collections of more than 50 museums.
In 2014 Fernando Botero set a new record at a Christie’s
auction Monday night, when his bronze creation “Adam and Eve” ( different version) sold for $2.5 million.
The previous record for the Colombian artist, known for his oversized and
exaggerated figures, was $2 million for his painting “Four Musicians,” which
sold in 2006.
Adam and Eve , sculpted
in 1981, stand in the gardens in Monaco, below the Casino. Botero donated 23 sculptures to sit in the plaza of
his home town Medellin, Colombia and
Adam and Eve are among them.
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