?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
ÁNGEL BOTELLO Paisaje.
Oil on board, circa 1955-60. 485x580 mm; 19 1/4x22<7/8> inches. Signed in black oil and annotated "9" in red oil, lower right recto.
Ex-collection private collection, Rye, New York.
Botello (1913-1986) was noted for his lack of adherence to a particular artistic style. He was known as "The Caribbean Gauguin" as his use of color and his subject matter was similar to the French artist, who spent his final years in French Polynesia. Botello was raised in a transient lifestyle; his family moved from Spain to France where Botello attended the École des Beaux-Arts, after which, he returned to Spain and joined the Republican Army as a cartographed when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936. He went back to France in 1939 where he regrouped with his family in a refugee camp, from where they emigrated to the Dominican Republic, where his style and carefree yet personal approach to art-making were warmly received. After the Dominican Republic, Botello later moved to Haiti, and then Mexico in order to study with Diego Rivera (see lots 360-368). He spent the last several decades of his career in Puerto Rico, where the current work was most likely created.
Botello's bright, serene, surrealistic figures create playful yet honest scenes. He translated his painted figures to sculpture later in his career, where the expressiveness and inventiveness of his forms were paramount. His later work was among his most personal; he stated that his three children and the bright colors of Puerto Rico stimulated his creativity and enabled him to explore new avenues of artistic experimentation.
