This set of two lithographs depicts a man in a fur coat depicted from the front and back. The tension between photography and drawing is stressed by the use of black and white that places Claudio Bravo in one of the dominant traditions of the moment, hyperrealism. He made Fur Coat when he was forty and already a recognized artist. In the first print of Fur Coat a young man is facing the viewer with eyes closed and in the second we see his head and shoulders from behind. Great detail is put into his short wavy hair, as well as the fur in the collar of his coat. Viewers can almost imagine running their fingers through the tiny hairs of the coat. Obsessed with beauty, Bravo developed a delicate style that brings him closer to Renaissance and Baroque painters. He specialized in portraits and fabrics and in Fur Coat both are equally taken to the sublime. Having extraordinary skills as a draftsman, he became famous as a portraitist of the upper classes and he never used photographs, but painted from the natural model. His famous portraits, still lifes, and wrapped packages show a patient artist, preoccupied both with composition as well as tiny texture details.
Claudio Bravo was born in Valparaíso, Chile. He studied painting with Miguel Venegas Cifuentes in Santiago de Chile. At the age of twenty- one he moved to Concepción, where he painted portraits for three years. After that he moved to Madrid where he continued doing portraits for the elite, even Spanish General Francisco Franco’s daughter. In 1963 he had his first exhibition in Madrid. He exposed the first wrapped packages and still lifes with rocks. He recalls that in the packages he was trying to mix realism and abstract painting. Later, the royal couple from the Philippines commissioned Bravo to paint their portrait. In 1972 he moved to Morocco where he stayed until his death, although he would spend long periods in New York and Madrid. Bravo was fascinated by the light in Tangier: “I have the impression that my best paintings were done in Tangier … Regarding the subjects of my work–they could have been done almost anywhere–Madrid, New York, Paris, Manila. Some of my paintings, however, do reflect more of a direct contact with the Islamic country where I live.” The artist said he organized his work in a methodic fashion. For the still lifes, first he would go to the market and buy the objects, then would arrange them for hours and only the next day would he start painting. His paintings are shaped with vases, fabrics, and antiques from Morocco. Frequently associated with hyperrealism and photo realism, he would state a difference: “I don’t consider myself a photo realist. They use photographs in their work and I do not. Whenever I see a photograph that appears to be a good photograph, I realize that it has virtually nothing to do with the way things look in reality. The eye sees so many more things than are captured by the camera. Photographs kill half tones. They also kill shadows and drastically change the color of light. I don’t consider myself a machine and I don’t work like the photo realists.”
