Robert Filliou 29 (Virgulino)

A compact-format painting that stages a tense encounter between Robert Filliou and the Brazilian outlaw Lampião. Drawing on the legacies of Anthropophagy and Tropicalismo, the work sustains an unstable balance between conceptual art and popular tradition. The shared motif of the hat—at once a functional object and a symbol—activates a reflection on mobility, authorship, and cultural resistance. Set within a metaphysical space, the composition condenses an intense collision between European and South American references into a precise and self-contained image.

Original · Signed · Certificate

€920

Product Details

Davis Lisboa, Robert Filliou 30 (Métis), 2023. Oil on linen, 50 × 50 × 3.5 cm (19.7 × 19.7 × 1.38 in).

This painting is structured around two decisive moments in Brazilian culture: the Anthropophagic movement of the 1920s and Tropicalismo in the late 1960s. Both advocate an active appropriation of external influences as a means of cultural transformation. Here, that operation unfolds as a structure in which elements are not synthesized, but held in a state of friction.

At the center of the composition, Robert Filliou and Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, known as Lampião—an emblematic figure of the cangaço, a form of social banditry in northeastern Brazil in the early twentieth century—are brought into relation without narrative resolution. The work does not seek reconciliation, but rather sustains a contrast between conceptual experimentation and popular tradition, between artistic practice and historical insurgency.

The connection between them is articulated through the motif of the hat. Filliou’s Galerie Légitime, conceived as a portable exhibition device, and Lampião’s chapéu de couro, associated with identity, authority, and resistance, operate as parallel forms. In both cases, the object exceeds its practical function to become a mobile, coded carrier of meaning.

The scene unfolds within a metaphysical space, marked by a restrained palette reminiscent of Giorgio de Chirico. Rather than a harmonious coexistence, the painting suggests an almost explosive collision of cultural languages, where references from South America and Europe confront one another without resolution. Within the context of Davis Museum Barcelona, the work operates as a precise visual proposition, where history, image, and thought are articulated with clarity and economy.