Botero: Abu Ghraib

Prestel. Softbound. As New. Black, color illustrated wraps. 112 pp. with 86 color plates. The world was shocked in 2003 by photographs revealing abuse of prisoners by U.S. guards at the notorius Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. In response, the reowned Colombian artist Fernando Botero created a series of riveting paintings and drawings that constitute an acerbic and poignant statement against violence and man's inhumanity to man. The 73-year-old artist, drawing on his knowledge of Renaissance art, has produced a body of works that are timely yet timeless, a vision of hell on earth belonging to a long tradition of artistic statements against war and violence that incluedes Goya's Caprichos and Picasso's Guernica, works by the Mexican muralists, the American artists Philip Guston and Leon Golub, and Botero's own 1980s responses to drug violence in Colombia.