Botero’s picnics express moments of happiness, abundance, and love of life in the landscape with ample food, wine, and other provisions. Sometimes, his picnickers are so relaxed they fall asleep. His early exploration of the picnic theme, Picnic in the Mountains, shows a couple nearly but not quite somnolent.
Inspired by the Andes Mountains, Botero humorously does not provide a picnic blanket as the picnickers sit on small cone-shaped mountains.
The picnickers are youthful and seemingly innocent and allude to Adam and Even before the Fall, though both are clothed. They are contrasted by sexual symbolism apparent in the breast-like mountains, the round fruits, grapes, bottles of wine, and bread baguettes. The woman holds fruit or cookie in her hand, hovering over her crotch. The man, reclining with a dreamy look, sucks on a blade of grass.
See Fernando Botero. Picnic in the Mountains (1966)