Robert Filliou 24

A portrait of Robert Filliou reimagined wearing his Galerie légitime (1962), presenting the museum as a portable and self-contained structure. Fragmented planes and directional elements destabilize the spatial field, while a vivid palette activates the surface. The partially obscured face—engaging with Broodthaers’ Cinéma Modèle—introduces a tension between presence and mediation. Integrated into The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, the work aligns with a historical lineage of artists who conceived the museum itself as an artwork.

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Davis Lisboa, Robert Filliou 24, 2022. Oil on linen, 80 × 80 × 3.5 cm (31.5 × 31.5 × 1.38 in).

This painting takes as its point of departure the well-known black-and-white photograph of Robert Filliou wearing his Galerie légitime (1962), conceived as a portable gallery in the form of a folded paper hat. Presented in the context of the Festival of Misfits, Gallery One, London, 1962, the image documents the activation of this gallery as an exhibition gesture, in which the artist himself becomes both support and display device. This approach redefines the museum as a mobile and autonomous structure. Within this same lineage are Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise and Marcel Broodthaers’ Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, whose experimental frameworks expand the notions of authorship and exhibition, forming an active conceptual background within the Davis Museum Barcelona.

The figure is situated within a constructed environment of fragmented planes and directional signs that destabilize spatial perception. The composition resists a fixed reading, unfolding through shifts and internal tensions. A vivid and contrasting palette reinforces this dynamic, with color operating simultaneously as a structuring element.

Formally, the work develops a pictorial language that combines clarity and rupture. The figure, though prominent, remains partially indeterminate: the face is obscured by comma-like forms that recall Cinéma Modèle by Broodthaers, a thermoformed plate that interrogates mechanisms of representation through the material fixation of the image and its relation to the cinematic apparatus. This ambiguity opens a reflection on identity and its mediation, in dialogue with the figure of the artist as the producer of their own institutional framework.

Integrated into The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, the work belongs to a body of paintings that translates museological propositions into pictorial terms. Executed with high-quality materials, the surface reveals a visible and active brushwork, generating an expressive material density. The square format echoes the museum’s cubic geometry, while its inclusion in the Full Color Period marks the beginning of a more expansive chromatic investigation.