A drawing by Fernando Botero from the Burundun-Burunda series, executed in 1961, sold at Lefebre Auctions in Bogota on March 18, 2026, for a hammer price of approximately US$17,000 at current exchange rates, rising to a total of approximately US$23,400 after buyer’s commission, making it one of the more notable results in Colombia’s domestic art market for a Botero work on paper from that early period.
The work measures 24.3 by 18.8 centimeters, a modest format that sets it apart from the large-scale canvases Botero became known for, yet Catalina Martinez, director of Lefebre, described it as a piece that places the viewer at “an early and fundamental moment of the master,” demonstrating how Botero used “drawing as a critical and narrative tool” well before the volumetric figures that defined his global reputation.
#Cultura | La obra de Fernando Botero que alcanzó millonaria cifra en una subasta en Bogotáhttps://t.co/sPbdOYlLur
— Revista Semana (@RevistaSemana) March 19, 2026
A political drawing from Colombia’s most satirical literary moment
The Burundun-Burunda form a deliberate artistic response to one of the most politically charged texts in Colombian literary history, and understanding that context explains why this small black-and-white piece commanded a price that a casual observer might not expect from a work of its dimensions.
The series takes its name from “El Gran Burundun-Burunda ha muerto,” a satirical novella published in 1952 by Colombian writer and diplomat Jorge Zalamea, which used allegory to attack the logic of Latin American authoritarianism after the post-war wave of military governments across the continent.
Botero, then in his late 20s, produced the illustrations as a direct visual response to Zalamea’s text, and the series documents a phase in his career when, according to art critic Walter Engel, cited by Lefebre, Botero demonstrated his full creative power in black and white before color and volume became his defining registers.
Martinez noted that in this work Colombia finds “a more direct, almost raw language, where the figure in caricature becomes a vehicle for denunciation,” and she argued that the piece’s importance lies in understanding the arc of one of Latin America’s most important artists rather than in collecting a recognizable Botero image, since this is, by definition, Botero before the volume that made him famous.
Colombia’s art market and the global Botero moment
Botero in Singapore, the largest exhibition of his work ever staged worldwide, has presented more than 130 pieces at Gardens by the Bay since January 2026, running through May, with Fernando Botero Zea, the artist’s son and co-president of the Fundacion Fernando Botero, confirming that the show covers all themes his father addressed across 70 years of professional work, including the overtly political series that the Singapore curators placed alongside the better-known still lifes and portraits.
According to Martinez, European and Asian exhibition activity of this scale has cemented Botero’s position as “a strong Latin American artist” in the eyes of international collectors, and she added that Botero “does not generate economic uncertainty” as an investment vehicle, a phrase that carries specific weight in a Colombian art market where collector confidence has historically tracked the country’s security and economic cycle rather than purely aesthetic criteria.
To this day, Colombia has not built a secondary art market infrastructure comparable to what Mexico City or São Paulo offer for Latin American work, and the gap between a Bogota hammer price of US$23,400 and the figures a comparable Botero drawing might reach at Christie’s or Sotheby’s in New York or London remains significant.
The domestic result is nonetheless a marker of how much Botero’s legacy continues to hold value inside the country that produced him, and whether the Singapore exhibition’s momentum translates into more institutional acquisition of Fernando Botero’s drawing and early political work will be a direct measure of how seriously Colombia’s museums treat the full range of what he left behind.