BOTERO—–THE BIG PICTURE

Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder but even so, to me one of the great art world mysteries is many people’s fascination for the works of Ferdinand Botero, the Colombian-born artist who likes his women big, bigger and HUGE.

A classic example is the giant woman who reclines in the Plaza Santo Domingo in Cartagena, It is rare that she is not surrounded by admirers who touch, photograph and clamber over her.

Even the 78-year-old Botero admits he is not sure why he is drawn to oversized women. “An artist is attracted to certain kinds of form without knowing why,” he once acknowledged.