Claudio Bravo's recent exhibition at Marlborough Chelsea shows this masterful painter in top form. The exhibition includes over 50 paintings half of which are large trompe l'oeil paintings of wrapped or wrinkled paper. The remaining are beautifully modeled still lifes of an assortment of objects and three small landscapes. Unfortunately, his figurative work is missing in this show.
Bravo's career as a gallery painter coincides with the rise of Pop art. Bravo paints beautifully with a strong emphasis on optical fidelity. Sometimes the work tends towards a slickness that is hard for me to discern where it originates. The majority of his work avoids difficult themes and tends towards the pleasingly decorative.
To be fair he has created very large religious or humanist themed paintings in the past that rival those by the best western artist. Add to this that Bravo is prolific and he strikes me as the type of artist that must always be painting. It is understandable why he doesn't paint such demanding works daily. In either case, with his reliance on what his eyes see and his desire to make beautiful paintings, Bravo confronts Post-Modernism head on and denies its hold over him.
The objects in the paintings tend to look expensive and often Bravo places them besides disposable objects such as styro-foam packing blocks. This lends a touch of whimsy to his work but more than that he has captured, in one particular way, what it looks and feels like to be alive now. His vision is sharp and clear eyed, there is no irony or ambiguity. He traffics in the beautiful and what is lacking is a sense that he must apologize for it. With his paintings Bravo participates in the unfolding tradition of western painting and clearly shows that it is a worthwhile endeavor.