I am not going turn Colombia's suffering into a business, declared Ferdinand Botero, and so he donated these powerful paintings to the National Museum of Colombia in Bogota rather than sell them. Botero created these intensely personal pieces in private over the last several years and this catalog is the first presentation of them to the art world.As an artist deeply connected to his native country, these images are quickly seen as Botero's wish for redemption from Colombia's current social crisis. Many of these images will startle the eyes that expect only Botero's joyous, voluminous portraits. The truths in these works overcome all preconceptions of his style: these are startling pictures of civil strife, as intensely realized as Goya's Disasters of War and as spontaneous and immediate as Picasso's Guernica was in 1939. If Botero's donations were created in grief, the gift itself is ultimately a hopeful one for Colombia. Consistent with his principle, Botero included about 23 other works in his gift-some of which have likewise never been seen or exhibited. This catalog reproduces all the works in the Botero's donacion as a record and testimony to the passion that links the man to his land and his times.