Claudio Bravo (Chilean b. 1936)

"Claudio Bravo has recounted the genesis of the package paintings, pointing out the almost haphazard nature of the inauguration of this phase of his career. 'I suppose that the idea for these pictures came partly through looking at Mark Rothko's paintings of large fields of color and partly through certain works that Antoni Tàpies had done using string across a canvas surface. The initial stimulus, however, was a very simple mundane one. Three of my sisters had come to stay with me from Chile. One day one of them came home with a number of packages and placed them on a table. I was fascinated by their forms and I painted them. I went on painting wrapped packages in many ways, investigating the abstract possibilities.'"

Claudio Bravo in conversation with Edward J. Sullivan.
E. J. Sullivan, Claudio Bravo: Wrapped Packages, 1997.