Still Life (Nature morte) 1945

Picasso made this Still Life, or Nature Morte, in Paris, and its blocky shapes and bold colours make me think about how we construct what we see. The painting is all about the physical stuff: paint, texture, and the surface it lands on. The colours aren’t blended so much as they just sit alongside each other. Look how he uses those thick black outlines to separate the shapes, almost like a coloring book, but the colors he uses are nothing like reality. That jagged zig zag edge between the yellow and the green is where this lobster dinner starts to fall apart – or come together, depending on how you look at it. It reminds me a little bit of Matisse, who was also thinking about how colors can create new forms. With Picasso, there’s always this sense of play, an invitation to rearrange the world, in our minds.