Marcel Broodthaers 22 (FIG 1)

Davis Lisboa, Marcel Broodthaers 22 (FIG 1), 2024. Oil on linen, 50 × 50 × 3.5 cm (19.7 × 19.7 × 1.38 in).

This painting is based on a frame from La Pluie (Projet pour un texte), the experimental film created by Marcel Broodthaers in 1969, in which the artist attempts to write under the rain while the ink slowly dissolves across the paper. In the film, writing ceases to function as text and becomes image, proposing a reflection on the fragility of language and the impossibility of permanently fixing an idea or gesture.

The painting revisits this scene through the visual language developed by Equipo Crónica, a key collective within Spanish Pop Art that combined references to art history with contemporary graphic and commercial codes. Simplified forms, sharp contrasts, and a deliberately mediated image construct a composition situated between appropriation, memory, and representation.

Unlike Broodthaers’ original film, the artist here appears sheltered beneath an umbrella in a full-color scene where the rain has almost entirely disappeared. Isolated and absorbed in the act of writing, the figure conveys a sense of pause and apparent stability.

The work belongs to The Paintings Section of Davis Museum Barcelona, a project that continues a tradition in art history associated with artists who conceived the museum as an extension of their own artistic practice, including Boîte-en-valise by Marcel Duchamp, Galerie Légitime by Robert Filliou, and Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles by Marcel Broodthaers.