Artist and memoirist Francoise Gilotknown for her tumultuous relationship with Pablo Picassodied aged 101 from heart and lung problems.
Vestdaughter of, Aurelia Engel, confirmed his death at New York Times. The centenarian also leaves to mourn her two children with Picasso, Claude Picasso, director of the artist’s estate, the Picasso Administration; and fashion and jewelry designer Paloma Picasso; as well as four grandchildren.
During her lifetime, Gilot was an incredibly productive artist, painting well into her 90s and leaving behind some 1,600 canvases and 3,600 works on paper, according to France Media Agency. She often worked with watercolors to create her vibrant paintings and was a dedicated ceramist. Gilot received many honors in his native France, including the highest national honor, the Legion of Honor.
Picasso met Gilot, 40 years his junior, in 1943, approaching his table in a Parisian bistro with a bowl of cherries. When she and her friend told him they were artists, he reportedly replied, “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day. Girls who look like that can’t be painters.
But Gilot, born in the suburbs of Paris into a wealthy family, had been an artist since the age of three. She began by borrowing brushes from her watercolourist mother and, at her father’s insistence, maintained a grueling eight-hour-a-day schedule of painting and legal studies. She had even just had her first show, after dropping out of law school to study art at the Académie Julian.
Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot in 1952. Photo by Roger Viollet via Getty Images.
Although he was married to dancer Olga Khokhlova, Picasso was immediately fascinated by the 21-year-old artist, whose early work had a distinct Cubist bent. Gilot became a key muse for the older artist, who portrayed her in masterpieces such as Flower Woman (1946) and Woman sitting (1949), sold at auction for £8.5 million ($9.6 million) in London in 2012.
In the end, Gilot was the only woman to leave Picasso on her own terms. (The two were together for a decade, but never married.)
“Pablo was the greatest love of my life, but you had to take measures to protect yourself. I did it, I left before I was destroyed,” Gilot recalls in Artists and conversation, a 2021 book by Janet Hawley. “[Picasso was] amazingly creative, a magician, so smart and attractive… But he was also very cruel, sadistic and merciless towards others, as well as towards himself.
Françoise Gilot and her daughter Paloma Picasso in 1952. Photo by Roger Viollet via Getty Images.
When she left him, Picasso told her “you imagine people are going to be interested in you”, according to a 1979 article in People. “They’ll never, really, just do it for yourself. It’ll just be some kind of curiosity they’ll have for someone whose life has touched mine so intimately.
Picasso has been making headlines recently as exhibitions around the world mark the 50th anniversary of his death. The renewed attention also brought up his well-documented mistreatment of women. This dark heritage is the subject of a critical exhibition“It’s Pablo-matic: Picasso according to Hannah Gadsbyat the Brooklyn Museum.
In a follow up to her 2018 stand-up special who skewered Picasso’s problematic personal life, comedian Gadsby associates the late Spanish artist with female artists such as Renee Cox, Käthe Kollwitz, Dindga McCannon, Ana Mendieta and Marilyn Minter. Gilot and Picasso’s other lovers and muses, such as artist Dora Maar, are mentioned in the exhibition, but their work is noticeably absent.
Francoise Gilot in 2015. Photo by Andrew Toth/Getty Images.
For her part, Gilot has been candid about her time with the famed artist, infamously releasing a bestselling memoir about their relationship, Life with Picassoin 1964. (It was later adapted into the 1996 film Surviving Picassowith Anthony Hopkins in the title role and Natascha McElhone as Gilot.)
The book detailed Picasso’s physical and emotional abuse. “He took the cigarette he was smoking and touched it to my right cheek and held it there,” Gilot wrote. “He must have expected me to walk away, but I was determined not to give him that satisfaction.”
Picasso filed three unsuccessful lawsuits against the book and never forgave Gilot for writing the telling account of their life together. He attempted to sabotage her artistic career and would remain estranged from their children for the rest of his life.
Gilot and Jonas Salk after their wedding in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris, France. Photo by Michel Ginfray/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images.
Gilot married twice, having her third child, Engel, with Luc Simon, a childhood friend. (The marriage lasted from 1955 to 1962.) In 1980, she married scientist Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine. They remained together until his death in 1995, but spent half of each year apart to focus on their respective careers, with Gilot keeping studios in New York and Paris.
She also served as chair of the fine arts department at the University of Southern California from 1976 to 1983.
Francoise Gilot. Three travel diaries: Venice, India, Senegal. Photo courtesy of Taschen.
His work can be found in the collection of institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in Paris; THE Metropolitan Museum of Art And modern Art Museum At New York; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.
In recent years, Gilot’s profile as an artist had risen. Gagosian organized in 2012 “Picasso and Françoise Gilot: Paris-Vallauris 1943-1953”, the first exhibition associating his art with that of Picasso. In 2018, she published a facsimile edition of a trio of sketchbooks which she made from 1974 to 1981, during trips to India, Senegal and Venice. Last year the New York Times declared her “‘It Girl’ at 100.”
Francoise Gilot, Paloma on guitar set an auction record for the artist with a sale of £922,500 ($1.3 million) at Sotheby’s London in 2021. Photo by John Phillips/Getty Images for Sotheby’s.
Gilot’s auction record stands at £922,500 ($1.3m), set at Sotheby’s London in 2021 for his oil painting Paloma on guitaraccording to Artnet Price Database. It was her first job to hit seven figures, and she had to wait that milestone until the year she turned 100.
Picasso, on the other hand, commanded a time the highest price ever achieved at auction with the 2015 sale of Women of Algiers (Version ‘O’) for $179.4 million – eclipsed since only by Leonardo DeVinciIt is $450 million Salvator Mundi.
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