Robert Filliou 5

Conceived as a reimagined portrait of Robert Filliou, this painting derives from a small sculpture featuring a top hat—an allusion to his “Galerie légitime,” a portable gallery concealed within a hat and emblematic of art as a nomadic event. After photographing the object, it was translated into a generic and deliberately blurred portrait of the French artist. The work enters into dialogue with Gerhard Richter’s photo-paintings of the 1960s and 1970s, where blur and calculated brushwork call into question the reliability of visual perception.

Part of “The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona,” the painting belongs to a miniature museum housed within a ballot box—at once a readymade sculpture, a digital archive, and a cultural entity officially recognized by the Generalitat de Catalunya. Through painting, it extends a lineage of artists who established their own museums: Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise, Filliou’s Galerie légitime, and Broodthaers’ Musée d’Art Moderne. The square format echoes the museum’s cubic structure, while the muted palette situates the work within its “Gray Period” (2010–2015).