Fernando Botero and his Abu Ghraib series

"If Picasso's paintings didn't exist, people wouldn't remember the tragedy of Guernica," said Fernando Botero, the Colombian painter and sculptor who passed away last year. Known as the "Mona Lisa Age Twelve," he was well-known for his unique style, depicting everything as chubby and bloated.

His reference to Picasso's "Guernica" was to emphasize the importance of art. "When people begin to forget, it helps them remember what happened," he once said. On April 26, 1937, the Nazis bombed the town of Guernica in the Basque region of northern Spain, killing over 2,000 people. But without Picasso's painting, which passionately depicted anger, sadness, and fear, humanity might have long forgotten that tragedy.

That comment came out while explaining why he began his series, "Abu Ghraib.” In 2003, Botero was enraged by photos of American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners. He was deeply hurt by the humiliation and disgrace suffered by the prisoners. This led to the birth of a series of over 80 paintings over a year and a half. The situation was similar to Picasso's response to Nazi atrocities when he started painting "Guernica." Botero referred to that period as a "parenthesis" or "interlude." It was a departure from normalcy for him as an artist who was supposed to capture beauty on canvas, not grotesque scenes of human-to-human abuse.

However, unlike in Europe, American art galleries hesitated to exhibit his work, fearing backlash. It was then that the University of California, Berkeley, stepped in. Botero successfully held an exhibition at the university library and donated 60 paintings to the university. Even today, several paintings are permanently displayed in the law school corridors. As the former dean Christopher Edley put it, "It's to remind law students of what can happen in a lawless moral vacuum." This is why art is necessary.