Less than five years ago, Jacob Vilató was undergoing a personal and professional transformation. At the time, he had just pivoted from a successful international architecture career to focus on Vilató i Vilató, the Barcelona-based art and design studio he co-founded with creative partner Itzel Culebro.
Since then, much has changed—his visual language, his creative motivations and even his sense of where he belongs in the artistic lineage that includes his great-uncle, Pablo Picasso. What hasn’t changed is Vilató’s quiet intensity and the raw curiosity that fuels his work. Once hesitant to publicly link himself to his ICONIC family heritage, he now embraces it more freely, not as a crutch or credential, but as part of a more complex narrative about influence, identity and artistic inheritance.
Vilató grew up in a household where art wasn’t a pursuit; it was a presence. Paintings by his great uncle hung unceremoniously on the walls; creativity was never separate from daily life. “Some families care about money, some care about society, some care about animals, but my family cares about art,” he says.
Yet, he chose a different path, steering toward architecture as a compromise between the logical and the lyrical. He founded an architecture firm with offices stretching from Barcelona and Beijing to Delhi, a choice guided more by a desire to please than by passion. But even as his practice grew, he couldn’t shake the urge to create more personally, more freely.
Furniture design offered an initial outlet. His sculptural pieces attracted attention from Architectural Digest, Surface, Azure and Elle Décor. But it was painting—a discipline he never formally studied but absorbed intuitively—that brought him back to himself. In 2019, he unveiled his paintings to the public for the first time through a high-profile charity auction. The enthusiastic reception buoyed him.
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Despite the pedigree, Vilató has never leaned heavily on the Picasso name. For years, he avoided mentioning the connection altogether. But over time, his view evolved. Rather than feeling overshadowed by the ICONIC figure, Vilató now describes the relationship as walking by Picasso’s hand, not in his shadow.
Today, his canvases are bold and instinctual. His forms, once architectural and controlled, now flirt with abstraction and surrealism. Collectors across continents—Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East—are taking note. As he prepares for new exhibitions and continues to evolve his craft, I visited with Vilató to gain a deeper understanding of how far he has come and where he’s headed next.
Since your first public exhibition in 2019, your work has been featured in collections worldwide. How has that kind of reception impacted your creative process?
I’ve become increasingly aware of how difficult it is to claim any supposed truth, sometimes due to superficial praise and at other times due to a lack of meaningful feedback. However, the truly incredible part of this journey is meeting extraordinary individuals who continually enrich my life, whether through book recommendations or original, unconventional ideas; it’s often in conversations that act like sparks, igniting new perspectives.
I’ve also developed a fear of painting, which might easily be mistaken for reverence, though caution is necessary here. This fear has actually fostered a more intimate, comforting artistic process. It compels me to create fractures, in a surreal sense, enabling deeper self-exploration. It’s a vivid reflection of Lavoisier’s maxim: “Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed.”
How do you begin a new painting? Is it a planned process, or does instinct lead the way?
I throw paint onto the canvas without expectation, accepting the possibility, even likelihood, of initial failure. I don’t like to start with preconceived ideas, as they inevitably lead to familiar places, and I’m far more interested in discovery than in craft. Each day, after hours spent painting and repainting, I eventually arrive somewhere meaningful. I prefer not to close my eyes until sleep finally insists.
Many artists describe a turning point when they started creating primarily for themselves rather than for an audience. Have you reached that moment?
I believe I’ve always painted for myself. Perhaps that’s the true family legacy, and it’s likely the reason I choose to keep a significant portion of my work. At the same time, there’s a deeply rooted spirit of service within me, influenced by my background in architecture and my family’s medical tradition. (His exposure to diseases such as cholera and diphtheria left a profound impact on him, especially after losing his sisters to illness.)
Your paintings have grown more gestural, emotional—even surreal. What drives your visual language?
I don’t like painting on autopilot or letting my mind drift too freely. I prefer to remain fully present. By doing so, I feel paths and insights gradually settle, even if I’m not immediately aware of them. Testing new ideas born from unexpected sparks can reveal surprising paths. A good example is my series “Primeras impresiones.” After returning from a trip, I left a few tickets lying around. Initially, I scratched them to darken and draw on them, then later applied alcohol to lighten the surfaces. From there, I discovered I could substantially transform the images while preserving a remarkable level of detail. Ironically, embracing unexpected discoveries has taught me that selectively losing control often leads me toward a deeper kind of mastery.
Are there themes or questions you keep coming back to in your work, consciously or not?
I’m deeply drawn to themes such as memory, not merely as an archive of the past, but as a selective filter that shapes who we are and how we perceive our surroundings. Perception itself also fascinates me: the delicate interplay between what we see and what we think we see, that thin border where reality blends seamlessly with imagination.
Another recurring theme is death, though not in a somber sense. Instead, it serves as a powerful reminder of life’s fragility and beauty. I’m intrigued by the paradoxical urge to step away from the real world precisely to grasp it more firmly, a kind of dance between escape and attachment.
My work engages with these ideas through intuition and gesture and through echoes of philosophers who constantly accompany me, such as Merleau-Ponty and his exploration of perception, and Bergson, who beautifully described memory as a living fusion of past and present. Ultimately, my paintings aim to make visible what is usually invisible: the intricate emotional and perceptual tapestry that shapes our reality.
What does success look like for you now?
In architecture, success had a more precise definition. It meant delivering a project that made my client happy, solving every idea as efficiently as possible, often with a mathematical, almost algebraic and geometric approach. Today, I find it harder to define success. Perhaps it has something to do with the profound feeling I get when I wake up in the morning and immediately feel compelled to see the piece I worked on the day before. When I create something I’m eager to revisit, something that questions me, intrigues me, I feel I’ve accomplished something essential. I’ve altered my memory and, consequently, how I live and perceive my own life. So, success now feels more intimate, perhaps less tangible, but infinitely more personal. It’s about creating something powerful enough to reshape how I exist in the world.
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