Claudio Bravo

CLAUDIO BRAVO CAMUS (Valparaiso 1936 - Taroudant, Morocco 2011).
"Three faces".
Mixed media on canvas.
Signed at the bottom.
Measurements: 46 x 61 cm; 51 x 66 cm (frame).

In Claudio Bravo's portraits converge technical quality, precision of the stroke and psychological depth. This is sufficiently reflected in these three faces, despite his desire on this occasion to blur them slightly to give them a certain enigmatic condition.

Bravo painted portraits of some of the most important figures of the time, such as Francisco Franco, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos or Malcolm Forbes. He is represented in the Baltimore and Philadelphia Museums of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Chile, the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico, the Boymans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne and the Palmer Museum in Pennsylvania.

Bravo, hyperrealist painter, Claudio Bravo studied art in the studio of Miguel Venegas Cifuentes, in Santiago de Chile. In 1954 he had his first exhibition, at the Salón 13 in the same city, when he was only seventeen years old. In the sixties he settled in Madrid as a portrait painter, and acquired great fame for the verisimilitude he achieved in his works. His concern for the qualities and details of objects is reminiscent of Velázquez and his baroque naturalism. In fact, during this period he spent in Madrid, he dedicated himself to studying in depth the works of the Prado, especially the Italian Renaissance and the Spanish Baroque. In 1963 he held his first exhibition in Madrid, and in 1968 he spent some years working in the Philippines for the family of President Ferdinand Marcos. In 1970 he had his first exhibition at the Staemplfi Gallery in New York, and two years later he moved to Tangier, where he lives and works to this day. In 1994 he organized a solo exhibition at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago de Chile.