Marcel Broodthaers 5

Davis Lisboa, Marcel Broodthaers 5, 2016. Oil on linen, 40 × 40 × 3.5 cm (15.7 × 15.7 × 1.38 in).

Derived from a still of La Pluie, Projet Pour Un Texte, the work revisits Marcel Broodthaers’s reflection on the impossibility of writing in the rain. The removal of the face heightens the scene’s closed, hermetic quality, shifting the image toward an open identity in which the figure becomes less a portrait than a site of projection.

The painting adopts a logic close to Gerhard Richter’s photo-paintings, translating photographic imagery into oil through a softly blurred surface. This loss of definition introduces a tension between presence and disappearance, affecting both the reading of the image and its persistence in memory.

The blue tonality unifies the composition, creating a low, subdued light that places the scene within a restrained emotional register. Rather than describing, color sustains the image, reinforcing its introspective quality through a deliberate economy of means.

Integrated into The Paintings Section From Davis Museum Barcelona, the piece is part of a broader framework in which painting and institution operate inseparably. In dialogue with figures such as Marcel Duchamp (Boîte-en-valise), Robert Filliou (Galerie légitime), and Broodthaers himself (Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles), the work unfolds within the formal language of the Davis Museum, where each image functions as part of a larger system.