Love at first sight for the artist toward Pietrasanta, a fascinated city
The Colombian artist Fernando Botero has often stayed in Versilia from the Seventies, realising several works in the artistic laboratories of this district.
Famous all over the world thanks to its paintings with women as fat as beautiful, in 1983 Botero decides to buy a house in Pietrasanta, choosing the beauty and the calmness of the olive groves leading to the fortress of Rocca. It is not difficult to identify this house, it is enough to look for a roof surmounted by a bronze rooster, whose short wings ali tend toward the sunrise.
In thi small town, Botero opens his art: an ample space non far from the main square, where he retires to plan and to assemble his sculptures during the summer. Botero loves to live closely with people from Pietrasanta, while his art lbecomes always more intrinsic with the city: from 1993 two big fresco entitled “La porta del Paradiso” and” La porta dell’inferno” attract people inside the Church of Misericordia. In Matteotti Square an opulent Roman soldier shows his belligerence to the passers-by(1992).
From 2001 Fernando Botero is honorary citizen of Pietrasanta, a return to the roots: in the far 1780 his ancestors, the brothers Giuseppe and Paolo Botero, saild from Genoa’s port to Medellin.
