A new restaurant in Barcelona takes inspiration from the extravagant, eccentric style of Jacqueline Roque, Pablo Picasso’s muse and second wife. Rockwell Group’s design for the three-story restaurant is driven by an abstraction of Picasso’s atelier and his love of entertaining, as well as four distinct portraits of Jacqueline. We mixed crafted, clean art nouveau details with spontaneous, graphic, and surreal imagery and forms.
The restaurant’s ground floor spaces, including the bar and main dining area, are inspired by Picasso’s “Woman in a Turkish costume seated in a chair” (1955). Here, Jacqueline is shown wearing an odalisque costume, depicted as “a woman of the harem.” It’s a colorful, sensual portrait in reds, yellows and blues.
For the main dining room, we were inspired by the palm trees outside of Picasso’s original atelier in Barcelona—he loved the trees so much that when they were taken down during a construction project, he moved to a different studio.
Existing columns in the space are clad in a reinterpreted Turkish pattern and support globe chandeliers.
The second floor was influenced by Picasso’s “Jacqueline with Flowers” (1954), a portrait of Jacqueline in a crouched, “Sphinx-like” position on a red sofa, her figure shown in profile to accentuate her long neck and almond-shaped eyes. Flowers and greenery appear in the background.
The club in the lower level is a nod to Picasso’s “Woman in a Mantilla Red Background” (1959), which depicts Jacqueline in a traditional black lace shawl over her head and shoulders against a bright red backdrop.
Backlit laser cut metal screens along the walls evoke the mantilla’s lace.
