Portrait of Malcolm S. Forbes,

1978

<p> Bravo was a Chilean hyperrealist painter who created works of luminous and unnatural clarity that were influenced by the work of European Renaissance and Baroque artists—in particular the richly textured depictions of cloth by the seventeenth-century Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbarán—and the Surrealist imagery of Salvador Dalí. His subject here, Malcolm Forbes, graduated from Princeton in 1941 and went on to assume the leadership of <em>Forbes</em> magazine (first established by his father, B. C. Forbes, in 1917) from 1964 until his death in 1990. Forbes was an avid collector of Fabergé eggs; specially shaped hot-air balloons, including one in the form of his château in France; and Harley-Davidson motorcycles. He is depicted here in his motorcycle suit, surrounded by motorcycle helmets, in a work that long hung in the lobby of the Forbes Building in Manhattan. </p>