Claudio Bravo Camus' 83rd Birthday

Google Dooles 07.11.2019 14:36  Date: November 8, 2019 Today’s Doodle celebrates the esteemed Chilean artist Claudio Bravo Camus, who fused the classical technique of Spanish Baroque painters with a touch of Salvador Dali-esque surrealism. Born in Valparaíso on this day in 1936, Bravo grew up on a ranch in Melipilla. After dancing for the Compañia de Ballet de Chile and acting at the Catholic University of Chile, he applied his talents to visual arts. Despite his father’s objections, the largely self-taught artist persisted, displaying his paintings at a well-known Valparaíso gallery by the age of 17. In the 1960s Bravo moved to Spain and became a portrait painter with prominent clients, including the family of General Francisco Franco and Philippine leaders Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. His 1970 exhibition at New York’s Staempfli Gallery featured large still-lifes of mysteriously mundane objects painted in a vivid, technically flawless style reminiscent of masters like Velázquez. Upon moving to Tangier, Morocco, Bravo expanded his repertoire to animal portraits and landscapes. Bravo’s work was sometimes compared to so-called photo-realist painters, but he did not work from photographs. “Always I have relied on the actual subject matter,” he said, mentioning Mark Rothko’s abstract color-field paintings as an influence. “The eye sees so much more than the camera: half tones, shadows, minute changes in the color or light.” The Doodle artwork focuses on his iconic series of mysterious packages wrapped in paper and tied with string, which brought him notoriety starting in the 1960s. The canvases blend a Pop Art sensibility with Claudio’s mastery of trompe-l'oeil painting so realistic it can “trick the eye.” A 1994 retrospective of Bravo’s work at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago attracted over a quarter of a million visitors. Early concepts by artist Shanti Rittgers Location: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Tags: , ,