FOR 5/9

‘CLAUDIO BRAVO: RECENT WORK’ ON VIEW AT MARLBOROUGH GALLERY

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NEW YORK CITY — “Claudio Bravo: Recent Work” is on view at Marlborough Gallery through June 7. The show consists of 36 oils on canvas and one pastel triptych.

In the last few years, using a realist style that recalls the delicacy, formality and craftsmanship of Old Master technique, Bravo has concentrated on studies of colored papers. This exhibition is devoted exclusively to this theme and is represented either by paintings of packages wrapped in paper or by works whose sole subject is colored papers.

The papers have been creased or crumpled, folded or twisted, ripped or torn and assembled to create compositional structure. In some cases the papers are suspended by string to a wall to form an odd, supernatural still life.

Over his career of more than 50 years, Bravo has proven that he can paint any subject he chooses, and his oeuvre has been marked by consummate treatments of the human figure, both nude and clothed, still lifes, portraits, interiors, religious and mythological subjects, drapery as a subject in itself, and, to a lesser extent, landscapes and cityscapes.

In all his work, according to the gallery, “he consistently pushes boundaries, periodically referencing elements from Surrealism, abstraction, minimalism, Pop art, and even photorealism, though he works from life, not photographs.”

The high achievement of his series of paintings of colored papers is in the nature of their seeming simplicity, a simplicity which belies their complexity and which arrives at clarifying painting’s formal values of line, form, and color. They are classic and modern, detailed and reductive, imaginative and inventive.

An illustrated color catalog will be available at the time of the exhibition.

The gallery is at 40 West 57th Street. For information, www.marlboroughgallery.com or 212-541-4900.