Pablo Picasso

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris

Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet, Stockholm

Gerard Bonnier, Stockholm (by 1953 and until at least 1959)

Galerie Beyeler, Basel

Private Collection, New York

James Goodman Gallery, New York

Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1981

Stockholm, Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet, 1918-1953, 1953, no. 115 (titled Le Homard et le poron)

Stockholm, Liljevalchs Konsthall, Cézanne till Picasso, 1954, no. 285 (titled Le Homard et le poron)

Oslo, Kunstnernes Hus, Picasso, 1956, no. 278

Stockholm, Svensk-Franska Konstgalleriet, Picasso, 1959, no. 16

Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Das Stilleben im 20. Jahrhundert, 1978-79, no. 92

Madrid, Fundacion Juan March, Maestros del siglo XX - Naturaleza muerta, 1979, no. 68

Rotterdam, Kunsthal, Picasso, kunstenaar van de eeuw, 1999

Schiedam, Stedelijk Museum, Picasso, Klee, Miró en de moderne kunst in Nederland, 1946-1958, 2006

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, oeuvres de 1946 à 1953, vol. 15, Paris, 1965, no. 116, illustrated pl. 68 (illustrated without the signature and with the measurements 50 by 65 cm)

The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture.  Liberation and Post-War Years -- 1944-1949, San Francisco, 2000, no. 48-045, illustrated p. 211 (illustrated without the signature and with the measurements 50 by 65 cm)

Picasso's still-lifes allowed him to contemplate the fragility of nature and the significance of the objects in his immediate environment.  This was particularly true when he chose to depict animals, or animals-as-food, as in the case of the present work.  This highly graphic and linear composition is one of three pictures of a lobster that Picasso completed the day after Christmas in 1948 (Zervos, vol. 15, nos. 113 and 114; see fig. 1).    In all three of these works, the lobster, evidently uncooked in the present painting given its blue color, is laid out on a table.   The title of the picture derives from the spouted, green bottle, or poron.  What we are looking at is presumably the artist's next meal – Picasso's favorite dish was bouillabaisse – and we are given a taste of what it was like to be in his kitchen in Paris on that day.   

Marie-Laure Bernadac reminds us that the events in Picasso's private life had significant bearing on his art, and all of the elements have an autobiographical significance.  "Indeed under each pot, bowl of fruit, or guitar, there lurks a story, a person, or an anecdote that is part of the painter's life.  Because of the autobiographical nature of his art, and because he assigned an equal value to the animal, mineral, plant, and human realms, he painted whatever was around him.  When he was at the seashore, he painted fish and crustaceans" (Marie-Laure Bernadac, "Painting from the Guts: Food in Picasso's Writings,"  Picasso and Things (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1992, p. 22).

Throughout the 1940s Picasso returned recurrently to the genre of still-life, first when he was confined to his Parisian studio during the war years, and, later, when he was living in newfound domestic comfort in Vallauris with his companion Françoise Gilot.  In these latter pictures, the artist applies the same linear emphasis and highly graphic quality that he uses in his portraits of Gilot (see fig. 2).  Paring down the representation of each object to just a few bold, black and white lines, he is able to convey both movement and stasis, light and shadow in a way that would eventually inspire Arshile Gorky and the Abstract Expressionists in the United States.  The most extreme example of this style is in his large depiction of his kitchen (see fig. 3), also painted in 1948.   

In addition to providing stylistic influence to the next generation of avant-garde painters, Nature morte au poron has several art historical precedents, particularly among the highly realistic still lifes of 17th century Dutch painters (see fig. 4).  But Picasso's choice of subject is weighted with symbolism, as Klaus Gallwitz explains: "As a key figure in this ambivalence between passivity and action Picasso chose the crab, the lobster, or the crawfish -- that shelled creature which, clutched in a child's hand, in a composition of 1941 looks like an animalistic, squirming bunch of flowers, or which in later pictures lies on a table with its many-limbed apparatus of pincers, claws and feet."  (Klaus Gallwitz, Picasso, The Heroic Years, New York, 1985, p. 50).

Fig. 1, Pablo Picasso, Poron et crustacé, December 26, 1948, oil on canvas, Osaka Museum

Fig. 2, Pablo Picasso, Femme dans un fauteuil, December 29, 1948 and January 1, 1949, oil on canvas, sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 10, 2000 for $3,000,000

Fig. 3, Pablo Picasso, La Cuisine, November 9, 1948, oil on canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Acquired through the Nelson A. Rockefeller Bequest

Fig. 4, Jan Davidszoon de Heem, Still Life with Fruit, Flowers, Glasses and Lobster, circa 1660, oil on canvas, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels