Robert Filliou 1

Davis Lisboa, Robert Filliou 1, 2011. Oil on linen, 30 × 30 × 3.5 cm (11.8 × 11.8 × 1.38 in)

The work is inspired by the central photograph in Autoportrait bien fait, mal fait, pas fait (1973), an assemblage by Robert Filliou in which the artist presents himself alongside his Galerie légitime, a portable gallery devised from a paper hat. Davis Lisboa translates this gesture into painting, where image, self-representation, and institutional structure are brought together with precision and ease.

The composition also recalls Menino com tabuleiro (1947) by Cândido Portinari. The frontal figure and its restrained expression create a quiet tension that opens the image onto a more indeterminate presence. Rather than functioning as a portrait in the strict sense, the painting occupies a space of ambiguity in which identity and symbol coexist.

The work is part of The Paintings Section From Davis Museum Barcelona, the only section of the museum in which artworks are available for sale. Within this context, the painting operates both as an autonomous work and as part of a broader institutional structure, in which the museum also appears as form, frame, and device.

In continuity with a lineage of artists who redefined the museum as a portable and authorial space—from Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise to Robert Filliou’s Galerie légitime and Marcel Broodthaers’s Musée d’Art Moderne—the work extends that tradition through painting. Executed in oil on linen, its square format subtly echoes the geometry that structures the Davis Museum.