Botero Abu Ghraib

The world was shocked in 2003 by the revelation that U.S. guards had mistreated Iraqi prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. In response, the renowned Colombian artist Fernando Botero created a series of riveting paintings and drawings that constitute an acerbic condemnation of man's inhumanity to man. The 73-year-old artist, drawing on his knowledge of Renaissance art, has produced a body of works that is timely yet timeless, a vision of hell on earth belonging to a noble tradition of artistic statements against war and violence that includes Goya's Disasters of War and Picasso's Guernica, the works of the Mexican muralists, and Botero's own 1990s paintings responding to drug violence in Colombia.