Botero sold his first work for two packs of cigarettes: now up for auction in Bogotá

Long before he became one of the world's best-known Latin American artists, Fernando Botero sold his first work for two packs of cigarettes. More than seven decades later, and almost three years after his death, that youthful watercolour is returning to the art market at an auction in Bogotá.

The piece, entitled 'La Plegaria' and executed in 1949, is regarded as the first work Botero sold in his career and features in an auction organised by Bogotá Auctions on 21 May, which will also offer more than 120 works of modern and contemporary Colombian and Latin American art.

As the auction house explains (source in Spanish), the watercolour belongs to the formative period of the Colombian painter and artist. 'In this piece the exploration of volume that would later define Botero's work has not yet appeared,' it says.

The painting depicts an elderly peasant praying, his hands clasped to his mouth and his eyes closed. Behind him, a woman shelters a child as she raises to the heavens a gaze full of fear and dread.

'La Plegaria' (1949) was the first work Fernando Botero sold in his artistic career. ('La Plegaria' (1949) was the first work Fernando Botero sold in his artistic career.)

Botero painted the work just a year after the assassination of Colombian Liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a crime that unleashed a wave of political violence in Colombia. At the time, the artist was still a teenager of about 17 and a long way from the international recognition he would achieve decades later with his monumental figures and exaggerated volumes.

The piece was then traded with Efrén Ossa, regarded as a pioneer of insurance law in Colombia. The anecdote contrasts sharply with the prices Botero's work has reached on the international art market, where his paintings and sculptures have sold for millions of dollars.

The auction will also include the oil on canvas 'Niña con flores' (1960), from a transitional phase towards the style that would come to define the Colombian artist.

'Niña con flores' (1960), by Fernando Botero ('Niña con flores' (1960), by Fernando Botero)

There will also be works by other leading figures in Latin American art, including Alejandro Obregón, Débora Arango, Beatriz González, Luis Caballero, Ana Mercedes Hoyos and Óscar Muñoz.

The Colombian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero, who died in 2023 at the age of 91, was one of the most influential and recognisable Latin American artists of the past century.

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