Chilean painter Claudio Bravo only studied art formally in the studio of Miguel Venegas Cienfuentes at an early age. Bravo had his first exhibition at the age of 17. In the 1960’s he moved to Madrid where he developed a reputation as an in demand society portrait painter. In the 1970’s he moved to Tangier, where he would live until his recent death on June 4, 2011.
Though known as hyper-realist, I find his work far from “photographic” and particularly enjoy his still life paintings. In his later work, Bravo began to take his fondness for depicting drapery and surfaces of crumpled paper and make them the subjects of large scale paintings, rather than simply aspects of still life or portrait compositions.
I also admire his De Hooch-like glimpses of rooms through doorways, and his paintings of paintings, usually on artist’s easels but in a relatively finished state.
His website is in Spanish, but can be navigated easily enough by non Spanish-speakers. “Obras” is works, and the galleries are divided into years. Note that within most galleries are multiple pages of thumbnails accessed by a row of numbers above the images.
There is also a nice selection of his work on Cuidad de la pintura, with over 180 works, and an additional gallery on Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.
One of the images in this post on Orange Crate Art shows the scale of his larger works.
There are at least a couple of collections of his work: Claudio Bravo: Paintings and Drawings, and Claudio Bravo And Morocco; though the former is not inexpensive and the latter seems out of print, but may be available used.
[Via Art Daily]
[Addendum: Matthew Innis has posted a nice tribute to Bravo on his blog, Underpaintings.]
