A typical father would encourage their sons to watch and play a manly sport. But if you’re the son of world-famous figurative artist and sculptor, the Colombian Fernando Botero, you’re urged to visit museums and learn history and culture at a young age.

This we learned when Fernando Botero Jr. visited the country with a plan to conduct a series of lectures and mount a Fernando Botero exhibit in Manila. Botero is famous for his signature style of rotund figures and inflated forms of people, animals, and elements of the natural world.

Botero Jr., now the codirector of the Botero in China initiative, is on a mission to advance the legacy of his father on this side of the world.

“My father is absolutely passionate about art and culture… Growing up with him was a constant invitation to use culture as a way to expand the mind and expand the horizon,” Botero Jr. said.

Going to museums did not simply mean going through hundreds of paintings and sculptors the way most tourists do. On a trip to Florence, Italy, as a young boy, for example, his father would take him every week to the Uffizi Gallery Museum.

“The experience of most people is that they see a lot of things but don’t really understand much. It takes a certain eye to see immediately whether that painting is or not important, is or not valuable, is or not a contribution, is or not in line with the great tradition in arts,” Botero Jr. said.

They were also watching Italian neorealism films by Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, or films by auteurs, like the late Swedish director, writer and producer Ingmar Bergman.

Botero Jr. laughed as he recalled how his father realized early on that he had no talent in painting at all.

“I never had any artistic talent, I’m sorry to say, so I never considered the possibility of a career in the arts,” he said.

The eldest child of Botero and his first wife Gloria Zea, he studied Political Science at the University of the Andes, Colombia. He also attended Harvard University’s Business School and Kennedy School of Government, where he obtained joint master’s degrees in Business and Public Administration. Botero Jr. capped his political career serving as Defense Minister of Colombia under President Ernesto Samper in the late 1990s.

About nine years ago, Botero Jr. realized that his father had exhibited in all key areas around the world except China. So the Botero in China project was born.

It was a difficult process, he said, but the project was able to mount exhibits of the Colombian master’s work in the National Museum of China in Beijing, the China Art Museum in Shanghai, and the Central Waterfront Area in Hong Kong.

“It was an exhibition that was truly amazing in the sense that we had 1.5 million visitors —numbers that are not normally associated with the world of art. That was encouraging as to further possibilities in Asia. Now the works of my father live in monumental structures,” he said.

His father is still to this day actively painting in his studio in Paris. Botero Jr. said his father believes, as is the case of many artists, that the most important function of art is to provide pleasure.

“Many of the series he has done lately is related to the most pleasurable aspects of human existence—first and foremost sexual activity. Botero Sutra is based on Kama Sutra. As he ages he is drawn more and more to the pleasurable aspects of human existence. He is 85. It’s incredible,” he said, laughing.

Even though maestro Botero has very clear political views—the artist was deeply affected by the Baghdad Central Prison Abu Ghraib that he spent a year-and-a-half painting close to 100 works around that theme—those political expressions are exceptions to the rule, Botero Jr. said.

The schedule for the series of lectures and exhibit have yet to be finalized.

Visit boteroinchina.cn.