167_robert_filliou_davis_lisboa_38_sigma

Robert Filliou 38 (Sigma)

Name: Robert Filliou 38 (Sigma)
SKU: FIL-38
Availability: InStock

Drawn from a still of Robert Filliou’s Teaching and Learning As Performing Arts Part II (1979), the work translates a performative gesture into a suspended image. The figure, restrained and silent, suggests a space of autonomy shaped by introspection and a latent tension.

Executed with a reduced palette inspired by Anders Zorn, the painting achieves a precise balance of light and tone, where chromatic economy reinforces its conceptual clarity. As part of The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, it is embedded within a broader narrative that engages with artists such as Marcel Duchamp and his Boîte-en-valise, Robert Filliou and his Galerie légitime, and Marcel Broodthaers with his Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, all of whom have conceived the museum as an artistic form.

Original · Signed · Certificate

€1,750

Product Details

Davis Lisboa, Robert Filliou 38 (Sigma), 2025. Oil on linen, 80 × 80 × 3.5 cm (31.5 × 31.5 × 1.38 in).

The work takes as its point of departure a still from Robert Filliou’s video Teaching and Learning As Performing Arts Part II: Travelin’ Light – It’s a Dance, Really (1979), in which the artist enacts a symbolic gesture of personal reconciliation. This reference positions the painting at the intersection of the fixed image and performative time, introducing a conceptual dimension that connects painting with the language of action and video art.

From this basis, the painting unfolds as a restrained and reflective proposition. The figure, held in a state of quiet suspension, shifts the original gesture toward a more interior register, suggesting art as a space of autonomy where resistance and self-definition remain inseparable.

The choice of medium operates as a form of translation: the rendering of a performative instant into painting. To this end, the work employs a restricted palette inspired by Anders Zorn, where chromatic economy enables a precise construction of light and sustained tonal depth. This approach situates the work in continuity with the European pictorial tradition while affirming a distinctly contemporary clarity.

As part of The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, the work is embedded within a broader art historical narrative focused on artists who have conceived the museum as form—from Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise to related practices. Within this framework, the painting functions not only as an image, but as an active element in a structure that explores the museum as device, archive, and artistic gesture.