Some illustrations have a very specific flavor, like the ones made by hand by Caro Boeta, a Brazilian painter who doesn’t photograph or decorate food, she tastes it and then translates it into color. Colored pencils, pastels, graphite and oil on paper are her tools, and the language is that of a gastronomic illustration in which every ingredient has its own hue.
Born in São Paulo and based in Milan since 2017, Caro came to painting after years in fashion, costume, luxury and vintage. In 2024, her move from designer to artist, working at it every day, felt like following a path that had already been written. Brazil left her a legacy of biodiversity and rhythm, which she also brings to her drawing, making her hand dance over the page.
For some time now she has been the menu artist at the restaurant Cracco Portofino, led by chef Mattia Pecis. At every menu change, Caro sits down and tastes a selection of dishes, looking for the story that the culinary journey tells. Every flavor has a color, some dishes even have a melody, and the plating does the rest: from there the drawing almost composes itself. From the whole, she then isolates the elements that become the illustrated frames of the menus, and from a single dish comes her “table art”, postcards served before each course.
But in her personal work too, food is the undisputed protagonist. In the series Natura Viva, oil on paper, stacked oxheart tomatoes, prawns, lemons, soups and desserts are portrayed from above like small still lifes, framed by patchworks of flat colors that have something of Klimt’s decorative style. A risotto becomes an amber sun on a blue plate, a tomato pasta a red weave that fills the whole table. In Aequilibrium the plate becomes almost abstract, in Terra Brasil the memory of home returns in tropical greens and yellows, in Botanica flowers stand out against dark or pastel backgrounds.
Color, she says, is sensitivity: it takes very little to turn a red into a pink, in all its shades, and that is where she looks for balance, in art as in life. A symphony in search of harmony, the same one that lingers in her mouth after tasting.
For anyone who follows contemporary illustration and wonders what happens when a painter sits down at the table, Caro Boeta is a delicious answer. Cooking and painting, after all, have hands in common: the ones that create unforgettable dishes and the ones that draw stunning illustrations.
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