Musée des Aigles Modernes 10

Davis Lisboa, Musée des Aigles Modernes 10, 2021. Oil on linen, 80 × 80 × 3.5 cm (31.5 × 31.5 × 1.4 in).

This painting is based on a historical photograph linked to the fictional museum conceived by Marcel Broodthaers in Brussels: Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, Section XIXème Siècle. Through this reference, the work translates an originally documentary image into painting, shifting its descriptive function toward a more synthetic and autonomous construction.

The transport crates and other reproduced elements visible in the original photograph are here reduced to a more distilled visual structure. Rather than reconstructing the scene, the painting condenses it through broad areas of color and an economy of means that brings the objects close to abstraction, allowing the image to emerge through formal relationships rather than descriptive detail.

Although derived from a black-and-white image, the composition is articulated through a restrained palette and soft light that heighten its stillness. This formal reduction introduces a distance that is not narrative but painterly, placing the work within a tradition in which simplification operates as a form of precision.

The work belongs to The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, a body of work that brings different modes of image registration and display into painting, situating each piece at the intersection of document, interpretation, and form.