Robert Filliou 6

Davis Lisboa, Robert Filliou 6, 2022. Oil on linen, 30 × 30 × 3.5 cm (11.81 × 11.81 × 1.38 in).

This imagined portrait of Robert Filliou is constructed through a logic of displacement, where the image does not assert identity but suspends it. Derived from a printed source and translated into painterly terms, the figure emerges blurred, held within an unstable threshold between presence and disappearance. The painting does not describe; it sustains the image in a state of latency, where the visible remains open.

Moving away from direct representation, the work operates as an anti-portrait. The face recedes, leaving only an oblique, almost incidental trace. This withdrawal is not a loss but a strategy, redirecting attention toward the mechanisms of image construction, in resonance with the playful and conceptual dimension that defines Filliou’s practice.

The presence of La Galerie Légitime introduces a subtle structural layer. More than a motif, it functions as a device: a portable, mental gallery that reconfigures the space of art from within the image itself. The portrait thus becomes a site of projection, completed through the viewer’s gaze rather than through visual certainty.

Integrated into The Paintings Section of the Davis Museum Barcelona, the work forms part of an ongoing inquiry into artists who have conceived their own museums, from Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise to Marcel Broodthaers’ Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles. Executed in oil on linen with traditional pigments, its square format—together with the use of monochrome blue—echoes the museum’s conceptual identity, articulating a precise relationship between painting, archive, and institutional structure.