I have never found anything in life that fulfilled me as much or gives me as much pleasure and peace as painting does. -Fernando Botero Fernando Botero has pursued excellence in art for sixty-five restless years, mastering many techniques and creating a formidable oeuvre of more than 3,000 paintings, over 200 sculptures, and at least 12,000 drawings. Few artists have been able to create a world as distinctive as Botero's, instantly recognisable worldwide by the balance between inventive volumetric forms and magnificent sense of colour-meticulous compositions painted with almost invisible brushstrokes, an expression of sumptuousness and sensuality radiating a sense of unity. Botero's art communicates monumentality and his sculpture accentuates it. Enjoying an exceptional position as one of the most successful contemporary artists, Fernando Botero nevertheless continues exploring with the same "fighting" attitude of his beginnings, wanting to learn a bit more day by day, as for him an artist is never "complete" and the process of knowledge has no end. "One can never claim to know how to paint," he asserts. "It is important to never lose one's strong inner feeling or the determination to develop one's personal style as an artist." This spectacular hand-bound Ultimate Collection volume presented in a linen clamshell case is curated in collaboration with the renowned artist himself from among Botero's most important works from each period of his singular oeuvre. AUTHOR: Cristina Carrillo de Albornoz Fisac is an author, curator, and critic whose work has been featured in publications including Vogue, The Art Newspaper, The European, The Observer, Beaux-Arts, Architectural Digest Spain, and La Reppublica. She has curated exhibitions on Balthus, Fernando Botero, and Frank Stella, and she has written books on Balthus, Botero, Mahatma Gandhi, and Satyajit Ray. In 2012 she curated a retrospective exhibition on Santiago Calatrava at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and she wrote the text for Assouline's book on the architect in 2013. A special numbered edition, limited to 100 copies, features a clamshell cover illustration and a hand-signed ex libris plate drawn by Fernando Botero especially for this publication.