Claudio Bravo
Package
1969
Scroll
Claudio Bravo
Package
1969
Physical Qualities
Pastel with stumping on paper, Sheet: 1003 × 702 mm. (39 1/2 × 27 5/8 in.)
Credit Line
Thomas E. Benesch Memorial Collection
Object Number
1970.4.19
When Claudio Bravo’s visiting sisters brought home several wrapped packages from a shopping excursion, the artist was struck by the incongruity and surprising beauty of them. Bravo’s interest in Surrealism, in which this kind of incongruity was embraced, led him to take up paper packages as a subject throughout his career. Bravo executes the humble object—we assume an unpainted canvas is inside the paper wrapping—in pastel with bravado and sumptuousness. The hyper-realism of details, such as the twine, contrasts, and yet is in harmony with, the near abstraction of the overall design.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by gift, 1970; Mr. Edward Benesch, NY
BMA, "Contemporary Spanish Drawings from the Thomas E. Benesch Memorial Collection," 17 September - 28 November 1986.
BMA, "Modern Master Drawings from the Museum's Thomas E. Benesch Memorial Collection," 21 February - 30 April 1989.
BMA, "Drawings of the 1960s from the Thomas E. Benesch Memorial Collection," 17 November 1993 - 30 January 1994.
Ann Shafer, BMA, "On Paper: Drawings from the Benesch Collection," 18 November 2012 - 10 February 2013.
BMA, "Modern Master Drawings from the Museum's Thomas E. Benesch Memorial Collection," 21 February - 30 April 1989.
BMA, "Drawings of the 1960s from the Thomas E. Benesch Memorial Collection," 17 November 1993 - 30 January 1994.
Ann Shafer, BMA, "On Paper: Drawings from the Benesch Collection," 18 November 2012 - 10 February 2013.
"The Thomas Edward Benesch Memorial Collection," BMA, 1970, unpaginated.
BMA Today, December 1993/January 1994, p. 9 (illus.).
Sam Trower, "Claudio Bravo Wrapped Packages," exh. cat. Bass Museum of Art, Miami, 1997, p. 42, fig. 7 (not in exh.).
Inscribed: lower left in graphite: "Bravo"
