Picasso’s Kitchen

An exhibition on the subject of Picasso’s kitchen? Why not? There is nothing at all incongruous in the idea, because cooking is a subtle revelation of Picasso’s art: painting, engraving, sculpture, ceramics, poetry and theatre. What is more, we should not neglect the role of the restaurant as a meet¬ing place for the avant-gardes, from the Quatre Gats tavern in Barcelona to the cabaret Au Lapin Agile on Montmartre, where the bohemians of the time and Picasso’s little entourage would share a table. Food, utensils and places related to cooking have a powerful capacity for evocation or association. Indeed, the very act of eating and digesting is a metaphor for a creative artist. In the edible – and even the inedible – there is a joyful possibility of swallowing the world. Picasso had this taste for the world and for all that is concrete, to the point of biting into it. His continual inventions and the euphoria of his imaginary bear witness to an insatiable appetite: Picasso enters the arena of the kitchen and commences his great ceremony. As Heraclitus said: ‘the gods are in the kitchen.’

Given that the culinary theme is present in every period of Picasso’s work, a chronological approach was ruled out in the catalogue, and we opted instead for ‘choice morsels’ and ‘mixtures’. The menu also includes brief texts on this or that particular period and more ‘copious’ essays describing Picasso’s kitchen.