Robert Filliou 7

Davis Lisboa, Robert Filliou 7, 2017. Oil on linen, 40 × 40 × 3.5 cm (15.75 × 15.75 × 1.38 in)

Robert Filliou 7 presents Robert Filliou as a stylized, almost timeless figure, carrying his Galerie Légitime (1962–64), the imaginary gallery he conceived as a portable and symbolic exhibition space. The portrait reimagines Filliou through a deliberately constructed pictorial presence, where biography gives way to image and the artist appears as both historical figure and conceptual emblem.

The work draws on a visual language shaped by photographic mediation and painterly blur. Its softened contours and suspended atmosphere introduce a measured instability, allowing the image to hover between recognition and disappearance. This tension lends the portrait a quiet theatricality, while reinforcing the reflective distance that structures the series as a whole.

Integrated into The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, the painting belongs to a body of work organized around portraits and still lifes dedicated to artists who conceived their own museum structures. In this context, Filliou enters into dialogue with Marcel Duchamp and Boîte-en-valise, as well as Marcel Broodthaers and Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles, forming part of a wider reflection on the artwork as archive, institution, and display.

This painting belongs to the “Blue Period” (2016–2018), marked by the use of the Davis Museum’s institutional blue. The square format and restrained chromatic structure reinforce the formal coherence of the series, aligning the painting with the museum’s cubic identity while preserving its singular atmosphere.