Fernando Botero pursued excellence in art for sixty-five restless years, mastering many techniques and creating a formidable oeuvre of more than 3,000 paintings, over 200 sculptures, and at least 12,000 drawings. Few artists have been able to create a world as distinctive as Botero’s, instantly recognizable worldwide by the balance between inventive volumetric forms and magnificent sense of color—meticulous compositions painted with almost invisible brushstrokes, an expression of sumptuousness and sensuality radiating a sense of unity. Botero’s art communicates monumentality, and his sculpture accentuates it.

Having enjoyed an exceptional position as one of the most successful contemporary artists, Fernando Botero nevertheless continued to explore with the same ""fighting"" attitude of his beginnings. He wanted to learn a bit more day by day because, for him, an artist was never ""complete,"" and the process of knowledge had no end. “One can never claim to know how to paint,” he asserted. “It is important to never lose one’s strong inner feeling or the determination to develop one’s personal style as an artist.

This spectacular hand-bound Ultimate Collection volume, presented in a linen clamshell case, includes previously unpublished works and was curated in collaboration with the renowned artist himself from among Botero’s most important works from each period of his singular oeuvre.