Marcel Duchamp 2

Davis Lisboa, Marcel Duchamp 2, 2013. Oil on linen, 40 × 40 × 3.5 cm (15.7 × 15.7 × 1.38 in).

Based on a historical photograph of Marcel Duchamp, this painting approaches the artist through a language of reduction and tonal restraint. Rather than treating the image as a stable document, the work reconfigures it as a painterly construction in which clarity gives way to atmosphere, compression, and ambiguity.

The portrait belongs to a body of works shaped by softened contours and a subdued chromatic range, where the figure is held in suspension rather than fully resolved. The image remains legible, yet partially withdrawn, allowing the painted surface to carry as much weight as the subject itself.

Part of the Gray Period, the work reflects a sustained interest in how photographic sources can be transformed through oil into images that feel both immediate and distanced. This tension between historical reference and painterly mediation gives the portrait its quiet intensity.

Belonging to The Painting Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, the work forms part of the only section of the museum in which artworks are available for acquisition. Within this broader framework, it extends a lineage shaped by Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise, Robert Filliou’s Galerie légitime, and Marcel Broodthaers’ Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, where the museum itself becomes an artistic medium.