Marcel Broodthaers X

Inspired by a photograph of Davis Lisboa wearing a rubber eagle mask, the work rethinks portraiture as a hybrid self-image and recalls Max Ernst’s surreal metamorphoses, in which animal heads displace human autonomy. A tenebrist enclosure evokes Baroque chiaroscuro, holding identity in suspension between disguise, emblem, and omen.

Executed in oil on linen, it is constructed through stratified opacities and selective glazing: the head reads as a sealed surface while the torso sinks into shadow, interlacing figure and ground. Old Holland pigments and Talens varnishes heighten saturation and deepen the blacks, situating the piece within the Full Color Period inaugurated in 2019.

As part of “The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona,” it operates as a museological self-portrait within Davis Museum Barcelona, a miniature museum staged inside a ballot box and recognized as a cultural entity by the Generalitat de Catalunya. It extends the self-instituting lineage of Duchamp’s “Boîte-en-valise,” Filliou’s “Galerie légitime,” and Broodthaers’ “Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles.”