Lot Essay
The paintings and drawings by Claudio Bravo in The Forbes Magazine Collection of New York represent one of the most important groups of works by this Chilean artist ever assembled. Not only does it span the career of the painter from his earliest years to his maturity but it includes work done in the three nations in which Bravo has resided: Chile, Spain and Morocoo. The collection was formed by Malcolm Forbes, a friend and a neighbor of the artist in Tangier. Given Mr. Forbes' strong interest in Orientalist subject matter it was logical that he should be especially fascinated by the works in which the Chilean painter turned his attention to Morocco, the country in which he has lived since 1972.
Although small in size, the several early drawings included in this sale are highly significant in so far as they refer to a number of key aspects of Bravo's early life and career. The four pen and ink drawings dated 1953 were executed in Chile just a year prior to the artist's first exhibition at the Salón Trece in Santiago. They are perhaps the earliest known works by the artist outside of those still in his family's collection. Three heads of classical composers, Bach, Beethoven and Haydn, display the early beginnings of his interest in portraiture. That of Beethoven captures particularly well the tormented personality of the German composer. The drawings of one of the figures from George Balanchine's ballet Stars and Stripes is especially significant as a testimony to the artist's early biography. As a child Bravo had a lively interest in all the arts. Between 1955 and 1961 he lived in both Santiago and Concepción where he wrote poetry, danced profesionally with the Compañia de Chile and worked for the Teatro de Ensayo of the Universidad Católica. The delicate red crayon study on paper of Rudolf Nureyev done in 1969 attests to Bravo's continued engagement with the performing arts. Here the youthful virility of the Russian master dancer and choreographer is beautifully observed. It is important to note that by the time he did this drawing Bravo had begun to sign his works (both paintings and drawings) with his carefully spelled out name and Roman numerals for the date. This detail is just one of many aspects of his art that points to his continued reverence for classicism.
Although certain critics have referred to the "photo-realist" qualities of Bravo's art he has never worked from photographs and vehemently denies any relationship to the aesthetic espoused by artist like Richard Estes or Audrey Flack. Nonetheless the extraordinary veracity of his figure, landscape and still life compositions cannot be denied. The extreme subtlety of his studies of the human form such as the 1974 Chrysanthemum (a nude woman seen from behind) or the 1982 Seated Male Nude makes the warmth of the sitters' flesh almost palpable. In each of these and many other related drawings there is an understated yet undeniable erotic quality. In a 1986 interview Bravo said "Eroticism is one fo the great constructive forces of life. It makes me want to live."
During his Madrid years Bravo concentrated on portraiture of prominent Spaniards. Nonetheless, these years were also productive from another point of view. It was then that he began to do this famous series of wrapped packages (inspired, in part, as Bravo states, by the work of Mark Rothko and Antoni Tapies). In addition, the 1960s also witnessed the artist's burgeoning interest in Zen Buddhism and the subsequent creation of numerous images connected in one way or another with Zen meditation. Among the most beautiful of his enigmatic series of paintings of stones is the 1965 Naturaleza Muerta. In this picture - a symphony of understated shades of green, tan, black and brown - the stones seem to suggest primal architectural structures like the dolmens of the northern European countryside. Another important facet of this and virtually all other still life compositions by Bravo is their close affinity with Spanish still life painting of the Baroque period. The artist has stated: "More than any other era I feel closest to the seventeenth century." Referring to his still lifes he says that "The objects I paint often transcend and magnify reality...I use light somewhat in the way that Zurbarán did. He was one of the few painters that gave true transcendent meanings to objects. This treatment of light makes things appear more as they are...their essence is greater." Besides the still life art of Zurbarán the names of such Spanish masters as Juan Sánchez Cotán and Juan van der Hamen may also be invoked in this context.
In 1972, eleven years after arriving in Spain Bravo left it to live in the northernmost city of the Islamic world - Tangier. "I chose Tangier because of its climate and its Mediterranean light." Intensely interested in the reminiscences of antiquity he finds in Morocco, Bravo states that "the landscape itself is biblical." He associates the intense mysticism of the religious practices of many people there with the ethereal aura that he believes pervades the art and literature the art and literature of seventeenth century Spain. And in some of his religious/allegorical paintings he combines these elements in a unique fashion.
Bravo is also engaged in the everyday realities of everyday life in his North African city. Although there is very little in his art that could be characterized as political commentary (and virtually none of his works has a topical content) the charcoal and pastel on paper entitled La Marcha Verde sobre el Sahara (27 de Octubre) dated 1975 is a remarkable exception to this rule. In late 1975 thousands of Moroccans of virtually all ages marched through the forbiddingly parched desert to what had formerly been the Spanish Sahara. Abandoned by Spain, this territory was claimed by Morocco. A dispute arose with Algeria and to bolster their claim Moroccan citizens began the Green March (Marcha Verde). The color green associated in Islamic theology with heaven. In his drawing Bravo takes this politicized event as his point of departure, yet this drawing is by no means an image of political propaganda. It is rather, a brilliant study of the effects of the intense white, sand-infused light of the desert. It is an ethereal scene; the figures seem to float in a vast empty space which underscores the religious intensity with which the participants carried out their mission. In many ways this work is one of Bravo's most spiritual pieces. In visual terms it approaches the abstract sensibility which is generally eschewed by the artist.
Bravo is acutely aware of the contradictions and incongruities of life in a country with one foot in the present and the other in the ancient past. In some of his finest canvases this clash of eastern and western, old and new, provide the crux of the image. Such is the case in several of the outstanding oil paintings from the Forbes Collection. In the 1976 Ami du Guardien we observe two characters - the former mayordomo of Bravo's Tangier house in traditional djellabah (with sneakers on his feet, however). His friend is clothed in thoroughly occidental garb. This juxtaposition tells us tht the seemingly "remote" aspects of what Bravo paints are not always so far removed fromour own contemporaneity.
Bravo has stated: "The people I paint are those who work in my house, their friends, my telephone repair man. But I can only get male models in Morocco - Islamic women will not pose for me." Nourredime (1983) represents a young man at rest from his exercises with weights. Although he is a Moroccan model, this painting, more than any other Forbes Collection group, announces the artist's clear reverence for the sculpture of Greco-Roman antiquity. The serenity evinced by classical art holds a singular attraction for the artist who has been an avid student of all aspects of the ancient world for many years. The figuer of Nourredime shares a common heritage with sculptural representations of the athletes of the classical period in Greece or the first century AD when Roman artists copied the Greek masterpieces. (We should remember that Morocco was an important colony of the Greek world). In addition, a reflection of Michelangelo's ignudi on the Sistine Chapel ceiling is also present in the figure of Nourredime.
Messaoud et son Fils of 1976 is a touching portrait representing a continuity of traditions, with father and son wearing the garb of Moroccan men which has changed so little over the years. Bravo thinks of works like this one and Portrait of Marroqui as depictions of individuals and not as simple representations of "exotic types." Bravo's sensibility is far from that of the more voyeuristic Orientalists of the past century (Gérome, Vernet, Roberts and others) who tended to emphasize the "otherness" of the North African or Middle Eastern peoples they depicted. Bravo lives and experiences North Africa on a daily basis and has done so for many years, thus allowing him to create much more serious, objective and non-picturesque views of this part of the world.
Bravo's representations of the topography of North Africa are as affecting as his figure paintings. The two Moroccan Landscapes of 1973 and 1976 respectively are calm meditations on the luminous beauty of the inland regions of the country. These and other related paintings share a sensibility with some of the European and North American painters of the nineteenth century (Caspar David Friedrich, Martin Johnson Heade, etc.) who sought to evoke a trascendental and even pantheistic beauty in their depictions of landscape.
Finally, we must remember that Bravo is a painter who is highly sensitive to the formal values of this compositions in terms of color, volume, texture, etc. In Dos Amigas (Marbella) of 1978 we have a gratifying study fo space, mass and light. A languorous attitude is provided by the position of the two young women yet the weight of the pillows, smooth texture of the tile floor and compelling yellow tone of the composition equally captures the viewer's attention.
Taken in their totality these works represent a virtual encyclopedia of the styles, subjects and aesthetic preoccupations of Claudio Bravo. Taken singly they each may stand alone as testimonies to the multifaceted and highly complex visual imagination of this important artist.
Edward Sullivan
Phoenix, September 1993.
Tangier has for generations entranced visitors from far-away lands. My late father, Malcolm S. Forbes, the New York-born son of a Scottish immigrant and Claudio Bravo, scion of a wealthy Santiago land owning family, are but two more who fell under the city's spell. FORBES purchased the Palais Mendoub in 1970, and Claudio Bravo bought his own retreat there two years later. Belgian-born long-time Tangier resident, Robert Gerofi, brought these two extraordinary men together shortly afterwards.
Pop's admiration for Bravo and his work was immediate and unflagging. Over the next decade and a half, almost thirty paintings, drawings and pastels entered the FORBES Magazine Collection. Some, like the powerful portrait of my father in his ballooning and motor-cycling gear, were commissioned directly from the artist, many came through the good offices of his galleries, first Staempfli then Marlborough, and a few earlier drawings and paintings from auctions. One was a surprise gift from the artist himself --an Andian landscape against which are deployed a regiment of Chilean mountaineers. These are among the almost 100,000 toy soldiers in the Palais Museum of Military Miniatures "inspected" by 70,000 tourists last year. Likewise, Bravo's portrait of Pop and a later one of oldest brother, Malcolm Jr., are the last works of art admired by over a thousand visitors a week as they depart the FORBES Magazine Galleries in New York.
Both portraits were included with twenty-four other paintings and drawings by Bravo and thirty-six photographs by Irving Penn in our 1990 exhibition. "Detached Realism." This pioneering show explored the dramatic aloofness of feeling achieved by these two-dimensional media. This was also the final show which Pop lived to enjoy.
In the years since his death, my brothers and I have formed our own ideas as to how the FORBES Magazine Collection should continue to evolve. These wonderful Bravo's as well as the incredible arrayof Orientalist works from the Palais Mendoub and a wide assortment of 19th-Century Continental paintings do not fall withing the parameters of our varied enthusiasms. So, as Pop hoped we would, we are "putting these back on the auction block" so that other collectors can have the same fun he had pursuing them originally.
Christopher Forbes
Although small in size, the several early drawings included in this sale are highly significant in so far as they refer to a number of key aspects of Bravo's early life and career. The four pen and ink drawings dated 1953 were executed in Chile just a year prior to the artist's first exhibition at the Salón Trece in Santiago. They are perhaps the earliest known works by the artist outside of those still in his family's collection. Three heads of classical composers, Bach, Beethoven and Haydn, display the early beginnings of his interest in portraiture. That of Beethoven captures particularly well the tormented personality of the German composer. The drawings of one of the figures from George Balanchine's ballet Stars and Stripes is especially significant as a testimony to the artist's early biography. As a child Bravo had a lively interest in all the arts. Between 1955 and 1961 he lived in both Santiago and Concepción where he wrote poetry, danced profesionally with the Compañia de Chile and worked for the Teatro de Ensayo of the Universidad Católica. The delicate red crayon study on paper of Rudolf Nureyev done in 1969 attests to Bravo's continued engagement with the performing arts. Here the youthful virility of the Russian master dancer and choreographer is beautifully observed. It is important to note that by the time he did this drawing Bravo had begun to sign his works (both paintings and drawings) with his carefully spelled out name and Roman numerals for the date. This detail is just one of many aspects of his art that points to his continued reverence for classicism.
Although certain critics have referred to the "photo-realist" qualities of Bravo's art he has never worked from photographs and vehemently denies any relationship to the aesthetic espoused by artist like Richard Estes or Audrey Flack. Nonetheless the extraordinary veracity of his figure, landscape and still life compositions cannot be denied. The extreme subtlety of his studies of the human form such as the 1974 Chrysanthemum (a nude woman seen from behind) or the 1982 Seated Male Nude makes the warmth of the sitters' flesh almost palpable. In each of these and many other related drawings there is an understated yet undeniable erotic quality. In a 1986 interview Bravo said "Eroticism is one fo the great constructive forces of life. It makes me want to live."
During his Madrid years Bravo concentrated on portraiture of prominent Spaniards. Nonetheless, these years were also productive from another point of view. It was then that he began to do this famous series of wrapped packages (inspired, in part, as Bravo states, by the work of Mark Rothko and Antoni Tapies). In addition, the 1960s also witnessed the artist's burgeoning interest in Zen Buddhism and the subsequent creation of numerous images connected in one way or another with Zen meditation. Among the most beautiful of his enigmatic series of paintings of stones is the 1965 Naturaleza Muerta. In this picture - a symphony of understated shades of green, tan, black and brown - the stones seem to suggest primal architectural structures like the dolmens of the northern European countryside. Another important facet of this and virtually all other still life compositions by Bravo is their close affinity with Spanish still life painting of the Baroque period. The artist has stated: "More than any other era I feel closest to the seventeenth century." Referring to his still lifes he says that "The objects I paint often transcend and magnify reality...I use light somewhat in the way that Zurbarán did. He was one of the few painters that gave true transcendent meanings to objects. This treatment of light makes things appear more as they are...their essence is greater." Besides the still life art of Zurbarán the names of such Spanish masters as Juan Sánchez Cotán and Juan van der Hamen may also be invoked in this context.
In 1972, eleven years after arriving in Spain Bravo left it to live in the northernmost city of the Islamic world - Tangier. "I chose Tangier because of its climate and its Mediterranean light." Intensely interested in the reminiscences of antiquity he finds in Morocco, Bravo states that "the landscape itself is biblical." He associates the intense mysticism of the religious practices of many people there with the ethereal aura that he believes pervades the art and literature the art and literature of seventeenth century Spain. And in some of his religious/allegorical paintings he combines these elements in a unique fashion.
Bravo is also engaged in the everyday realities of everyday life in his North African city. Although there is very little in his art that could be characterized as political commentary (and virtually none of his works has a topical content) the charcoal and pastel on paper entitled La Marcha Verde sobre el Sahara (27 de Octubre) dated 1975 is a remarkable exception to this rule. In late 1975 thousands of Moroccans of virtually all ages marched through the forbiddingly parched desert to what had formerly been the Spanish Sahara. Abandoned by Spain, this territory was claimed by Morocco. A dispute arose with Algeria and to bolster their claim Moroccan citizens began the Green March (Marcha Verde). The color green associated in Islamic theology with heaven. In his drawing Bravo takes this politicized event as his point of departure, yet this drawing is by no means an image of political propaganda. It is rather, a brilliant study of the effects of the intense white, sand-infused light of the desert. It is an ethereal scene; the figures seem to float in a vast empty space which underscores the religious intensity with which the participants carried out their mission. In many ways this work is one of Bravo's most spiritual pieces. In visual terms it approaches the abstract sensibility which is generally eschewed by the artist.
Bravo is acutely aware of the contradictions and incongruities of life in a country with one foot in the present and the other in the ancient past. In some of his finest canvases this clash of eastern and western, old and new, provide the crux of the image. Such is the case in several of the outstanding oil paintings from the Forbes Collection. In the 1976 Ami du Guardien we observe two characters - the former mayordomo of Bravo's Tangier house in traditional djellabah (with sneakers on his feet, however). His friend is clothed in thoroughly occidental garb. This juxtaposition tells us tht the seemingly "remote" aspects of what Bravo paints are not always so far removed fromour own contemporaneity.
Bravo has stated: "The people I paint are those who work in my house, their friends, my telephone repair man. But I can only get male models in Morocco - Islamic women will not pose for me." Nourredime (1983) represents a young man at rest from his exercises with weights. Although he is a Moroccan model, this painting, more than any other Forbes Collection group, announces the artist's clear reverence for the sculpture of Greco-Roman antiquity. The serenity evinced by classical art holds a singular attraction for the artist who has been an avid student of all aspects of the ancient world for many years. The figuer of Nourredime shares a common heritage with sculptural representations of the athletes of the classical period in Greece or the first century AD when Roman artists copied the Greek masterpieces. (We should remember that Morocco was an important colony of the Greek world). In addition, a reflection of Michelangelo's ignudi on the Sistine Chapel ceiling is also present in the figure of Nourredime.
Messaoud et son Fils of 1976 is a touching portrait representing a continuity of traditions, with father and son wearing the garb of Moroccan men which has changed so little over the years. Bravo thinks of works like this one and Portrait of Marroqui as depictions of individuals and not as simple representations of "exotic types." Bravo's sensibility is far from that of the more voyeuristic Orientalists of the past century (Gérome, Vernet, Roberts and others) who tended to emphasize the "otherness" of the North African or Middle Eastern peoples they depicted. Bravo lives and experiences North Africa on a daily basis and has done so for many years, thus allowing him to create much more serious, objective and non-picturesque views of this part of the world.
Bravo's representations of the topography of North Africa are as affecting as his figure paintings. The two Moroccan Landscapes of 1973 and 1976 respectively are calm meditations on the luminous beauty of the inland regions of the country. These and other related paintings share a sensibility with some of the European and North American painters of the nineteenth century (Caspar David Friedrich, Martin Johnson Heade, etc.) who sought to evoke a trascendental and even pantheistic beauty in their depictions of landscape.
Finally, we must remember that Bravo is a painter who is highly sensitive to the formal values of this compositions in terms of color, volume, texture, etc. In Dos Amigas (Marbella) of 1978 we have a gratifying study fo space, mass and light. A languorous attitude is provided by the position of the two young women yet the weight of the pillows, smooth texture of the tile floor and compelling yellow tone of the composition equally captures the viewer's attention.
Taken in their totality these works represent a virtual encyclopedia of the styles, subjects and aesthetic preoccupations of Claudio Bravo. Taken singly they each may stand alone as testimonies to the multifaceted and highly complex visual imagination of this important artist.
Edward Sullivan
Phoenix, September 1993.
Tangier has for generations entranced visitors from far-away lands. My late father, Malcolm S. Forbes, the New York-born son of a Scottish immigrant and Claudio Bravo, scion of a wealthy Santiago land owning family, are but two more who fell under the city's spell. FORBES purchased the Palais Mendoub in 1970, and Claudio Bravo bought his own retreat there two years later. Belgian-born long-time Tangier resident, Robert Gerofi, brought these two extraordinary men together shortly afterwards.
Pop's admiration for Bravo and his work was immediate and unflagging. Over the next decade and a half, almost thirty paintings, drawings and pastels entered the FORBES Magazine Collection. Some, like the powerful portrait of my father in his ballooning and motor-cycling gear, were commissioned directly from the artist, many came through the good offices of his galleries, first Staempfli then Marlborough, and a few earlier drawings and paintings from auctions. One was a surprise gift from the artist himself --an Andian landscape against which are deployed a regiment of Chilean mountaineers. These are among the almost 100,000 toy soldiers in the Palais Museum of Military Miniatures "inspected" by 70,000 tourists last year. Likewise, Bravo's portrait of Pop and a later one of oldest brother, Malcolm Jr., are the last works of art admired by over a thousand visitors a week as they depart the FORBES Magazine Galleries in New York.
Both portraits were included with twenty-four other paintings and drawings by Bravo and thirty-six photographs by Irving Penn in our 1990 exhibition. "Detached Realism." This pioneering show explored the dramatic aloofness of feeling achieved by these two-dimensional media. This was also the final show which Pop lived to enjoy.
In the years since his death, my brothers and I have formed our own ideas as to how the FORBES Magazine Collection should continue to evolve. These wonderful Bravo's as well as the incredible arrayof Orientalist works from the Palais Mendoub and a wide assortment of 19th-Century Continental paintings do not fall withing the parameters of our varied enthusiasms. So, as Pop hoped we would, we are "putting these back on the auction block" so that other collectors can have the same fun he had pursuing them originally.
Christopher Forbes