The Art of CLAUDIO BRAVO (part 2)

Claudio Bravo (Nov.1936 - June 2011) was a Chilean hyperrealist painter. During his stay in Spain under Franco's rule, he established himself as a society portraitist during the 1960s, but most art was constrained to Franco's ultra right-wing policies. While Bravo's portraits appealed to the conservative public, he became frustrated with the lack of intellectual values concerning art. His art shifted one day when his three visiting sisters brought home some packages and left them on the table. He was fascinated by their forms and the texture of the paper they were wrapped with. A subtle reference to commercialism lingers in the simple fact that it is a parcel, but the mystery of what the paper conceals seems to be more important. The package is teasing the viewer by slowly opening up and while the internal structure is hinted at, it will never be revealed.

In 1972 Bravo moved to Morocco where he found the colors and light he had been searching for. The fact that it was a completely different place in almost every aspect of life (religion, language, clothing, etc.) was very intriguing to him and it quickly became the place that he considered to be his home. Still lifes, packages and figurative paintings make up the majority of the works he created in Morocco where he lived for the last 39 years of his life.