Botero's Abu Ghraib's paintings on show in Washington

WASHINGTON (Reuters Life!) - Colombian artist Fernando Botero is known for his cheerful paintings of oversized people, but after reading reports about torture in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq his work took a darker turn.

He channeled his anger into 79 paintings and drawings that are being shown at a new exhibition that opened in Washington this week.

Botero told students and visitors at the show that he would expect dictators in a third world country to abuse prisoners, but not a nation that defends human rights and democracy.

"To learn that Americans were torturing was a shock to the whole world," he said. "I was upset when I read about it in the American press".

So he painted. And for the past three years Botero has knocked on the doors of American museums, but he said no one was willing to show the complete collection until the American University museum agreed to exhibit it.

Paris-based Botero concentrated on the suffering and the dignity of the victims, rather than their abusers. The paintings show Botero's characteristic oversized bodies in the prison's corridor, naked with traces of blood, their faces in pain, their gritted teeth.

"It was painful to think about this and it was painful to paint it. It's not like painting an odalisque, a beautiful woman or a landscape," he said.

"(But) you know you are doing a very serious thing, a very dramatic thing," he added.

Botero said the paintings are to be "seen, not sold", so he has decided to donate the whole collection to a museum. The exhibition is part of wider show called "Art of Confrontation" that will continue until December 30 at the Katzen Arts Center of the university.

It also includes works from feminist artists from the 1970's, and paintings by Irving Norman that critique "the inhumanity of war, the inequity of capitalism and the tyranny of the elite", according to the museum.

"Because the museum is linked to the university, we are allowed to be more open and daring with our exhibits," said American University's spokeswoman Maralee Csellar.

Botero said he expects to receive criticism in the United States, as he did in Europe when the works were shown there, from people that don't agree with his point of view.

"There was criticism, phone calls, letters and hate mail. It was expected," he said.

Despite his effort to depict the horrors of torture, he doesn't have hopes that art can change anything in the world.

"Guernica was the greatest painting of the 20th century, but it could do nothing against (Spanish dictator Francisco) Franco," he said about Pablo Picasso's masterpiece.

"But this will remind people of a dark moment of this government, of what is torture," he added.

When a student asked who he would like to invite to see the exhibit, he answered: "Bush".

Botero's works go next to Monterrey, in Mexico.