The Nevada Museum of Art’s latest exhibition, The Baroque World of Fernando Botero, is a big show -- big in every way.

It is an important major show of an artist who is wildly successful worldwide. It covers the entire third floor and more. The canvases are big, with glorious colors, and inflated subjects that fill them up. Some of the sculptures are huge, but even the smaller ones are done with sumptuous rounded forms. The collection is the work of a remarkable Colombian-born artist, Fernando Botero. The Colombian Ambassador to the United States, Carolina Barco, refers to him in the show’s catalog as the ‘painter of Colombia’s soul.’

So how did this man arrive at this style which many others have mimicked? In his childhood in the 1930’s and 40’s he saw ornate Baroque churches with dramatic religious paintings and sculpture. He saw colorful tile-roofed homes and lush vegetation. His eyes were opened to modern art when he happened upon a book which dealt with Picasso’s art. He spent the proceeds he won in an art competition on an extended trip to Europe. In Spain he consumed the work of Velazquez and Goya. In Italy he studied the art of fresco painting and absorbed the best of Quattrocento painting. He also came to admire the work of Courbet, Ingres and Delacroix. In the late 1950’s he went to Mexico, and took in the work of the great muralists Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros. It was in Mexico that he developed his unique style. He told of a day that he was painting “Still life with a mandolin.” He made the sound hole quite small, and realized that it changed and inflated the form of the mandolin in a way he found very pleasing. From that time on the form of his subjects became rounded and enlarged.

He has said: “The purpose of my style is to exalt the volumes, not only because that enlarges the area in which I can apply color, but also because it conveys the sensuality, the exuberance, the profusion of the form I am searching for.”

So in this show we see all of these threads coming together – his memory of, and kinship with, past and contemporary artists, his Colombian upbringing, and his own particular vision. Many of the pieces are his own variations on familiar classical paintings –Velazquez, Ingres, Piero della Francesca – but always with his own inflated forms and odd perspectives. There are portraits of artists he admires, from Picasso to Giacometti. There are distinctly Latin American portraits of solemn dignitaries and clergymen with all the trappings of power. There are bullfighters, prostitutes, bicycle racers and artists’ models. There are Colombian village scenes that show normal every-day goings-on. There are still lifes with the standard fruits and musical instruments, but done with Botero’s stunning colors, rounded forms and skewed perspectives. But behind these wonderful colors and benign subjects there is often a feeling of menace, or of sadness. Colombia is a country that has been plagued by natural disasters as well as political violence. Surely this has helped to form Botero’s magical, melancholy world.

In the 1970’s Botero began to translate his forms into sculpture. His sculptures are sleek and sensual, highly finished so that light accentuates form. They are done in Pietrasanta, the Tuscan town near Carrara famous for its marble and bronze facilities. Botero summers there and divides the rest of his time between New York, Monte Carlo and Paris. It is not safe for Botero to return to Colombia, and yet he feels that his entire artistic sensibility is rooted in Colombia. “My country and ‘Paisa’ origin have been my strength and spirit, the essence of my artistic creation.

The Baroque World of Fernando Botero is on display from May 1- July 25 in the Feature Gallery South, North & East.