Since the age of nineteen-the year of his first solo exhibition-Fernando Botero has delighted his audience with the joyfully rotund figures that populate his canvases. Like any great artist, he was compelled to paint the female form. More than 100 of his greatest works devoted to the theme of women are collected in this oversized, deluxe volume, the design of which was overseen and directed by the artist himself. This book includes fifty unpublished works, numerous archival photographs, and vellum inserts printed with images made by Botero especially for the book.

Botero never works from live models, as he feels it limits his creativity. The women in his work are inspired by the women he has known throughout his life-the vivacious neighborhood characters from his native Colombia. In the early 1950s, he left Colombia to study the paintings of great artists, such as Diego Velázquez and Piero della Francesca, all of which made a lasting impression on the artist.

Accompanying the work of this incomparable artist is an introduction by one of the most respected Latin American writers of today, Carlos Fuentes.

Carlos Fuentes has been the Robert F. Kennedy Professor of Latin American Studies at Harvard University since 1987, and he is the author of more than seven novels. He divides his time between Spain and Mexico.