Marcel Broodthaers 21

Conceptually, I was inspired by a photographic portrait of the Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers, a significant figure in conceptual art, born in 1924. Broodthaers challenged traditional narratives with his most acclaimed work, the ‘Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles’ (1968). His fictional museum was divided into several sections, with the seventh and last, the intriguing ‘Section Cinéma’ (1972), standing out. The black and white photograph shows the artist standing next to a small children’s piano on which the phrase ‘Les Aigles’ is written. Stylistically, I was inspired by the paintings of the Spanish Baroque painter Diego Velázquez, master of chiaroscuro. In an original and conceptual creation, my painting diverges from the photograph by showing Broodthaers wearing a white hat, which in my work represents the ‘Galerie légitime’, an imaginary commercial art gallery created by Robert Filliou. This element introduces an imaginative interaction between two conceptual artists from different eras, creating a visual and thematic fusion that did not previously exist.