Like canvases that represent wrapped canvases, the majority of Bravo’s works are self-referential: In a sense, his paintings are about painting itself. In each work he establishes dialogues with other artists, refers to and often reworks pictorial traditions and tests the technical limits of oil paint, pastel, charcoal and pencil. He always paints and draws from life, rarely doing preparatory sketches and never takes shortcuts. "I work between eight and 10 hours a day," he says. "And I’m a seven-day-a-week painter. I never rest."

While Bravo admits to obsessing over even the smallest details (in his view, "the more obsessed an artist is, the more he strives to make his art better") his works are not literal reflections of the outside world. "You’re not exactly copying reality; it’s something more, the painting is a concept," he explains. Pictures like "The Warden and his Son" (1979), a hybrid portrait, self-portrait and vanitas painting, encapsulate this approach. Bravo is present in this surreal scene as subject, object and artist: He is reflected in the mirror à la Velázquez, visible in the classical self-portrait on the wall as well as materially present in his signature. Yet in contrast with his postmodern approach, the date below the signature is inscribed in Roman numerals, as in all of his works. "I do it because my art is classical," he asserts. "It’s been that way since childhood. It’s something I can’t deny."

Neither the art nor the artist represented in such paintings exudes a marked Chilean identity, though Bravo’s work is invariably marketed at auction as "Latin American." Having lived in Europe for 11 years and in Morocco for more than three decades, Bravo considers his artwork a "cultural cocktail" and cares little for labels. "I am only South American because of my passport," Bravo says. "My art has nothing to do with my heritage. I am very connected to the European past—to ancient art, to Renaissance art. Even when I do a painting of a contemporary scene, as in my New York pictures, its roots are in Italian art of the 15th century."

Vanessa Davidson is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at New York University, where she is researching her dissertation on conceptual art and alternative communication networks in Brazil and Argentina during the 1970s.