With whimsical irony and a style reminiscent of the old masters Fernando Botero (b.1932) began painting caricatured animals and corpulent bodies with disproportionate heads at a time when his contemporaries were fervently rejecting figurative work in favor of abstraction. More recently he has expanded into sculpture creating delightful large-scale bronze works portraying the same sorts of voluminous figures he so loved to paint. Like the writings of Gabriel García Márquez or the music of Astor Piazzola Botero's work has come to represent modern Latin American culture.