On view

Still Life with Glass and Knife

Vallauris, October 28, 1947

Red earthenware painted with slips

32 x 38 cm

Museo Picasso Málaga. Gift of Christine Ruiz-Picasso MPM1.69

Françoise Gilot and Picasso’s first son Claude was born on 15 May 1947. Months later Picasso began working at the Madoura pottery studio in Vallauris. He showed great interest in the master potters’ various techniques, especially modelling, turning and glazing. His gestural language and inventiveness became fully adapted to the properties of ceramics. Between 1947 and 1948, Picasso produced nearly two thousand pieces at the Ramiés’ workshop.

‘That day Picasso took possession of a place of his own in our workshop, that venerable workshop hundreds of years old in which so many generations of potters down through the centuries have fashioned thousands and thousands of everyday objects in the honest clay of Vallauris. Like these potters, he sat down at his bench and – exacting, diligent, alert, almost feverish, taciturn too – began his first piece, the forerunner of the multitude of pieces he was to shape throughout these long years of hard, ceaseless work.’

RAMIÉ, Georges. Picasso’s Ceramics. New York: Viking Press, 1976, pp. 14–17

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‘More than 30 years after the creation of his first Cubist works, Picasso returned to explore the elements of space and depth that had intrigued him as a young artist. The long plate shown here is one of the Madoura ceramic factory’s press-molded models made for mass commercial production; it is composed of white earthenware and has been incised and “paint-ed” by the artist with slips, a mixture of clay and liquids that produced the colors. The three-dimensional plate repeats the effects of Picasso’s early Cubist sculptures, except here the variety of materials has been limited to fired clay and colors created with slips.

The Mediterranean tradition of embellishing everyday ceramics into decorative still lifes dates back centuries. Picasso has combined the trompe-l’œil effect of Spanish platos de engaño with the elaborate works of the sixteenth-century ceramist Bernard Palissy for the French court to produce these modern ceramic still lifes intended to fool the eye. Historically, this kind of ceramic work intentionally confused the practical, utilitarian nature of ceramic plates and cookware with the unlimited possibilities of a purely decorative object.

The plate has been coated with slips, whose clay and liquid composition has a natural affinity with the earthenware and has turned, when heated, into the deep brown and black tones that cover the majority of the visible surface. The uncoated areas exposing the white earthenware cleverly unify the dining utensils: glass, cutlery, and plate, visually relating items that serve a common function through their white color. The pronounced contrast of colors created by retaining a portion of the plate’s natural tone amplifies the depth of this ceramic still life. Had the plate’s lower rim been painted, the play of elements would have been reduced and the sense of depth significantly flattened. A black line that traces the border of the plate skillfully defines and unifies the composition. The Musée Picasso in Paris has an earthenware plate (*Long Plate with Still Life: Glass, Knife and Apple*, 28 October1947) with a still life of a glass, knife, and apple that reveals compositional and technical parallels with the present example; both are dated 28 October 1947’.

Text: GIMÉNEZ, Carmen (ed). Collection Museo Picasso Málaga. Malaga: Museo Picasso Málaga, 2003, pp. 365-366.

1947