Forty-eight paintings and sketches - of naked prisoners attacked by dogs, dangling from ropes, beaten by guards, in a mangled heap of bodies - will be exhibited in Rome at the Palazzo Venezia museum on June 16.

....Mr. Botero said the paintings and sketches, done in oils, pencil and charcoal and part of a 170-piece traveling exhibition, would also be shown at the Würth Museum in Germany in October and at the Pinacoteca in Athens next year before returning to Germany. The exhibition was first made public last month, when Diners, a Colombian magazine, published photographs of the works.

Botero, 73, began his political art just last year with a collection of graphic portrayals of the war in Colombia. In an interview, he explains his reasoning:

....with time, and his growing outrage, Mr. Botero said he had become more cognizant that art could and should make a statement....He pointed to the most famous antiwar painting of the 20th century, Picasso's masterpiece that depicted the German bombing of Guernica, Spain. Had Picasso not produced "Guernica," Mr. Botero said, the town would have been another footnote in the Spanish Civil War.

He said he read about Abu Ghraib in The New Yorker, then followed European news accounts. Calling himself an admirer of the United States - one of his sons lives in Miami - Mr. Botero said he became incensed because he expected better of the American government.

Botero's collection includes these depictions:

One inmate hangs from the ceiling, a rope around his ankle. Another work shows a soldier beating a prisoner with a baton, while yet another portrays a soldier urinating on an inmate. In many of the works, inmates simply scream in pain.

The art is not for sale.

Mr. Botero said the works being exhibited, and those he has continued to create on Abu Ghraib, were not for sale because it would not be proper to profit from such events.

Several European museums are interested in showing the exhibit. None in the U.S. have expressed an interest.

Moving on to Belgium....

This is an event that took place in Bruges, Belgium. 2,000 people braved freezng temperatures to disrobe as part of an art project.

It was a good feeling, everybody went naked and there was this sense of togetherness. There was no shame," said Charlotte Logghe, 28. "It was extremely cold though. We were wet through and through," she added.