Originally Fernando Botero didn't set himself to paint a young Mona Lisa. He had painted a Colombian girl (aged 12). While he was living in New York City in the early sixties, the woman that cleaned Botero's apartment saw the painting and told him that it resembled the Mona Lisa. Botero picked-up on that comment, modified the painting and renamed it, Mona Lisa, Age 12. Because that is the way he paints. In all his paintings people are impossibly fat, and many people enjoy his paintings. The creation of the Mona Lisa, aged 12 began with a young Columbian girl aged 12: Not with Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. According to the artist, he was working on the portrait of a young Columbian girl in his New York apartment when his cleaner remarked, the painting reminded her of the Mona Lisa: To which Botero made some modifications and named it Mona Lisa, Aged 12.

La Mona Lisa. Aunque desde 1960 residió en el extranjero (doce años en Nueva York y luego en París e Italia), se siguió sintiendo el más colombiano de los artistas colombianos. En su etapa neoyorquina revisó, desde un punto de vista irónico, obras de Francisco de Goya y Diego Velázquez, entre otros. El Museo de Arte Moderno de Nueva York (MoMA) le compró en 1961 La Mona Lisa a los doce años, obra que podemos ver en la imagen.

The Mona Lisa(La Gioconda) , MonaLisa is a high quality, hand painted reproduction of Fernando Botero’s oil painting Mona Lisa, Aged 12. The original is a large oil painting (211 x 195.5 cm) created around 1960 in the artist’s studio in New York. One might think the monumental size of the original reflected Botero’s admiration for Italian Renaissance Leonardo Da Vinci; the creator of the original Mona Lisa. However, this is not actually the case – Although Botero’s earliest artistic influences did come from the Italian Baroque style artworks of local colonial Churches.

As well as 123 of his own paintings, including his take on famous works like the Mona Lisa, he donated 85 pieces by other artists showing that Botero must have made a few dollars in his time. The warren of rooms on two floors has paintings and sculptures by the likes of Dali, Renoir, Monet, Corot, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Miro, Chagall, Max Ernst, Chirico, Giacometti and Lucian Freud. Following the bequest Botero produced a series of 50 paintings as a response to the Abu Ghraib torture scenes, which he will be donating to museums everywhere after the exhibition has toured the world.

Fernando Botero Mona Lisa is a quirky contemporary art work that would fit well into modern contemporary surroundings. The original is part of the collection on display at the Botero Museum in Columbia and one of the Fernando Botero’s most recognized art works.