ZURICH.- Galerie Gmurzynska presents a major exhibition of new paintings and sculpture by the internationally renowned modern master, Fernando Botero. The show will be installed throughout three galeries, including Gmurzynska’s location in famed Paradeplatz in Zürich, Galerie Gmurzynska Zug, as well as a new galerie in Zug inaugurated by the Botero exhibition.

Titled It Is All About Volume, the exhibition is comprised of over 20 new paintings and sculptures that collectively revisit the most iconic subjects of the artist’s six-decade career. Included are quintessential examples of Botero’s bullfighters, circus performers, imbibers, musicians, reclining couples and society women that have characterized his oeuvre since the early 1950s. While the figures represent a sweeping sample of humanity, they are nonetheless instantly recognizable as characters of Botero’s. The artist’s commitment to innovatively representing volume has been the primary impetus in his paintings, sculpture and works on paper since his first drawings of bullfighters as a teenager. This recent body of work reexamines the myriad of figures with which Botero has employed this formal device in creating an iconographic vocabulary that could not possibly be mistaken for that of another artist.

Universally acknowledged as one of the canonical international artists of his generation, Fernando Botero has had over 200 solo exhibitions on five continents. His work is included in countless museum collections around the world, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain;The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; and The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, among many others. Botero was twice included in the Venice Biennale, thirty-four years apart in 1958 and 1992, and in 2012 he was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award for Sculpture from The International Sculpture Center.

This ambitious multi-venue installation represents an important moment in the history of Galerie Gmurzynska, which will celebrate its twentieth year in Zug, the galerie’s first location in Switzerland. Founded in Cologne in 1965, Gmurzynska relocated completely to Switzerland in 2005 upon the opening of its Paradeplatz galerie in a building dating back to 1857 and in which the Dada movement was founded in 1917. With the opening of Fernando Botero: It Is All About Volume, Gmurzynska will unveil its newest location, housed in a 15th century building at Vorstadt 14 in Zug’s Old City district, situated in close proximity to the existing Galerie Gmuryznska Zug.