Claudio Bravo (1936 – 2011)

Born November 8, 1936 in Valparaiso, Chile, Claudio Bravo grew up on his family’s farm, where his father was a rancher and also a respected businessman. While attending the Jesuit school in Valparaiso, he also took academic art classes, but he was and remained largely a self-taught artist.

While he had his first exhibition at the prestigious Salón 13 in Valparaiso while still a teenager, he also had a brief stint as a dancer with the Ballet de Chile; these were times of exploration for the young Bravo, but he eventually narrowed and focused his artistic efforts solely on painting and earned a local reputation as a portrait artist.

Bravo moved to Madrid in the early 1960s, where he quickly established himself as a fashionable portraitist, as well as a contemporary artist in the same hyperrealist aesthetic vein as Antonio López, his contemporary (born the same year) in Spain, who became a leading member of what became known as the Escuela Madrileña. Appreciation for his superb draughtsmanship and technical skills was immediate, and he soon began painting the famous and celebrated figures of the time in Madrid.

Around 1970, Bravo began to represent issues of gender identity, as well as homoerotic male nudes and traditional depictions of homoerotic religious representations, such as Saint Sebastian, in his paintings and drawings. This theme was revolutionary in the context of both the Latin American and Spanish painting traditions and was clearly in opposition to the bourgeois aesthetic values ​​prevalent during the repressive cultural climate of Franco’s dictatorship, which lasted at least until the Generalissimo’s death in 1975.

These themes were to remain constant in his work and shed light on the understanding of his artistic output, as well as his decision to move to Morocco back in 1972. The presentation of these themes is certainly one of Bravo’s most valuable contributions to the artistic canon of his time, as well as a valuable testimony to the evolutionary changes in gender issues in contemporary art. Until the late 1980s, this aspect of his work, considered controversial and “difficult to accept” by collectors of the time, was a certain obstacle that slowed down his recognition as an important artist.

In his work, Bravo remained faithful to the long tradition of realistic painting, with a particular emphasis on the still life (Naturaleza Muerta) of the Spanish school, which dates back to the 17th-century masters Zurbarán, Yepes, Sánchez Cotán, and was continued by Meléndez in the 18th century. This classical Spanish tradition, which adds a metaphysical element to his modern realism, also defines his style.

His first exhibition in New York was at the Staempfli Gallery in 1970, where his boxed paintings were met with critical acclaim. The gallery followed up his initial success with a series of exhibitions throughout the rest of the decade, and he exhibited at the venue in 1972, 1974, and 1978.

His first exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery, which has represented him internationally to this day, was in New York in 1981. The Marlborough exhibitions of the 1980s cemented his international reputation, and his prices soon rose to five figures, with several of his paintings surpassing the $1 million barrier at auction by the time of his death. This is no small achievement for a Latin American artist, considering that up until that time there had only been one living artist in the same price bracket, and that was Fernando Botero.

Claudio Bravo moved to Morocco in 1972 and began painting his environment there: still lifes of local ceramics, fruits and carpets, furniture and the local population, much in the same vein as the 19th century.
Orientalists of the century have recorded the “exoticism” of the East, but in Bravo’s painting the exotic element is largely absent from his hyperrealistic style. The images are presented without any specific commentary, in the most neutral of impacts.

Largely concerned with the effect of light and the materiality of objects, as well as color, Bravos’s paintings are nevertheless a rare example of a cultural hybrid that is increasingly becoming an active component of the life of a contemporary artist, so paradoxically his work is the work of a Latin American artist who has captured the contemporary life of Middle Eastern culture at a time of contradictions and cultural tensions in this part of the world.

It is also important to note that in the context of the traditional Islamic division of living spaces by gender, painting in Morocco has the added significance of presenting almost exclusively male subjects; thus Bravo continued the discourse on gender identity, which is undoubtedly a strong component of this period and of his entire artistic oeuvre.

However, in the context of the centuries-old history of cultural exchange between Spain and the Islamic tradition in art, this part of his oeuvre is also part of his cultural heritage. The most comprehensive and erudite exhibition of this area of ​​Bravos’ work was organized in Paris at L’Institut du Monde Arabe in March-May 2004, in which his own collection of Islamic ceramics was juxtaposed with the works he had made in Morocco.

Bravo was a perfectionist in his work and worked tirelessly to achieve his highly detailed and finished pieces. His close friend and Marlborough representative in Chile, Ana Maria Stagno, who often visited him in Morocco, noted that his typical workday lasted at least 10 hours, with a short lunch break in the middle of the day, and that he pursued his projects with a tenacity and zeal that seemed almost religious.

In the 1990s, Bravo purchased a country house in Chile and visited it regularly. In 1994, his retrospective exhibition at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Santiago was a true recognition of his preeminent position as a great artist in his own country. It broke all previous attendance records and brought him critical acclaim and respectful recognition, a tribute to his international success and fame. Less well known, but very indicative of his personality as a private individual, are his philanthropic efforts in Chile, where he has made significant donations to schools and hospitals.