Robert Filliou 30 (Métis)

Davis Lisboa, Robert Filliou 30 (Métis), 2023. Oil on linen, 50 × 50 × 3.5 cm (19.7 × 19.7 × 1.38 in).

The painting develops a hybrid portrait in which the figure of Robert Filliou is combined with a character identified as “Moreno,” a recurring nickname among groups of cangaceiros. Rather than referring to a specific individual, the name functions as an open signifier within the cultural imaginary of northeastern Brazil. The image is thus articulated as a point of convergence between European contemporary art and Latin American popular culture, where identity is understood as a fluid and continuously shifting condition.

The composition takes as its point of departure a portrait of Filliou from Autoportrait bien fait, mal fait, pas fait (1973), extending its experimental logic into a different cultural context. At the same time, the historical memory of the cangaço—marked by nomadic, resistant, and often mythologized figures—introduces a narrative dimension that moves between the documentary and the symbolic, avoiding fixation on a single identity.

From a chromatic perspective, the work evokes the suspended atmospheres of Giorgio de Chirico, in dialogue with the direct intensity of Northeastern Brazilian folk art. Formally, it reveals an affinity with the ambiguous and subtly unsettling figuration of George Condo, where distortion operates as a structural device that destabilizes representation.

Situated within a lineage of artists who have developed their own museological frameworks—such as the Boîte-en-valise by Marcel Duchamp and the Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles by Marcel Broodthaers—the work is integrated into the framework of the Davis Museum Barcelona. In this context, the painting functions simultaneously as an autonomous image and as part of an expanding institutional structure, where the boundaries between artwork, archive, and display remain deliberately open.