The tall clown. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The Beijing exhibition shows only a part of Botero's art world in which he also works with sculptures and fresco paintings. His productiveness is not only as a result of attention to detail and artistic technique. He is also a workaholic to whom birthdays and festivals mean little.

Juan Carlos Botero describes his father as "a very strange person" who has seldom taken vacations.

"Every single day he draws and sculpts, and he always has new ideas," Juan Carlos Botero says. "He arrives in his studio at about 7 am and leaves at 8 pm. He has no assistant. He does all the work all by himself."

But in the eyes of his grandchildren, Fernando Botero is playful and funny.

When his grandchildren were very young, the artist would tell them he was too tired to work on the lower half of his paintings and would let them scribble. Later, he would erase their drawings and continue to paint over the same.

"He believes life is worth living. That is why he has lived and worked so long," Juan Carlos Botero says of his illustrious father.

If you go

9 am-5 pm, closed Mondays, through Jan 2. National Museum of China, 16 East Chang'an Avenue, Dongcheng district, Beijing. 010-6511-6188.