These works, which come from the artist’s own collection and are not for sale, are strongly personal statements of his reaction and feelings stemming from his reading of news media accounts of the events taking place at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003. The show will consist of approximately forty-five works and will include both paintings and drawings. The subject of the works deals with the abuses, both physical and moral, that were inflicted on the Iraqi prisoners. In depicting these offensive and violent scenes from the chapters of war’s atrocities and man’s inhumanity to man Botero follows a long line of artists, such as Goya, Grosz, Manet, Dix, Beckmann and Picasso, whose reactions to war have been documented in various media and artistic forms. What makes these paintings and drawings all the more moving is the insistent sadness and force that are implicit in these scenes of Abu Ghraib from an artist whose work usually connotes joy, sensual form, and often humor. In fact, Botero has made paintings throughout his career that address issues such as political oppression, social injustice, and suffering. In 1994 Botero treated the civil strife in Colombia in a series of works that depict the bloodshed and pain experienced during that country’s guerrilla war. Consequently, this series of work based on Abu Ghraib represents at this stage of his career his strongest statement of outrage against human violence.