Would you mind speaking a little louder?” asks the great master of painting as he works through the morning in his studio in Paris, waiting for a phone call from his native Colombia. “I might be going a little deaf,” he remarks. It’s not every day one gets to talk to Fernando Botero (Medellín, April 19, 1932), without doubt the most important Colombian artist alive, known worldwide and considered a key figure in the history of art.