Claudio G. Bravo

Chilean painter and draughtsman. He studied painting in Santiago in 1947–8 with the Chilean painter Miguel Venegas, then lived in Spain from 1961 to 1972 before moving to Tangiers. His entire artistic career has been conducted outside his native country.Bravo initially worked as a portrait painter, supporting himself in Spain through commissions, which also introduced him into Spanish high society. His sitters included General Franco and his family. Later, while still in Spain, he began painting packages and wrapped objects in a polished, highly detailed realist style bordering on Photorealism but consciously related to the Spanish still-life tradition represented by Zurbarán and Velázquez, whose work he greatly admired. He remarked that he hoped to be regarded as one of the few 20th-century painters to have respected the work of the Old Masters and learnt from it.Working with both oil paints and pastels, after moving to Morocco, Bravo combined objects with human figures in interior spaces, displaying perfect control of the luminous atmosphere and the strict perspective. While his technical facility was undeniable, the ambiguity of his subject-matter and the mysteriousness of his settings, tempering the clarity of the figures and objects, led him beyond the mere reproduction of appearances. Unlike the Photorealists, who tended to present their images as straightforward visual evidence, Bravo used his motifs as a way of dealing with obsessions such as narcissism or the random meeting of figures unconnected in time. An illusory and confusing interplay between reality and representation is central to Bravo’s work, leaving the spectator unsure whether what he is seeing lies inside or outside the painting. Source: Oxford

Claudio Bravo’s realistic images burst into the ‘60s with explosive force. His adherence to “trompe lóeil” and the classic finishing of his work, were anomalous in view of the vanguard movements of the time. However, Bravo was able to establish a space for his creations, rightfully esteemed for their aesthetic excellence. Years later he was to be recognized as a precursor of the hyperrealism of the 70s.The work is part of a series in which the artist explores variations on the same image. Bravo updates Zurbarán’s robes in the contemporary theme of an ordinary paper wrapping tied with string. The image contains a secret, a riddle. Part of its fascination lies in the mystery of its contents, open to the interpretation and reading supplied by the espectator. Bravo achieves a perfect fusion of form and content in an image that is also a metaphor of its essence.