Françoise gilot died
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Françoise Gilot: a passionate, courageous life
In memory of Françoise Gilot, who has died at the age of 101, we revisit a feature published in 2021 when an exhibition was held in Hong Kong to mark her 100th birthday
Françoise Gilot holding a red gladiola in Vallauris, France, 1949. Photo: Gjon Mili / The LIFE Picture Collection / Shutterstock
The French artist Françoise Gilot — who turns 100 on 26 November — remembers a childhood conversation that splendidly anticipated her life and career ahead. It happened when Gilot was just five and on a trip with her parents to the Swiss Alps.
Struck by the gorgeous mix of light green meadows and dark green forest, she asked her father if he could see the same thing — ‘In other words, was [her view] objective or was it subjective?’
Monsieur Gilot called such a question ‘stupid’ as ‘the retina is the same for everybody’. To which his daughter retorted: ‘Yes, Father, the retina is the same for everybody, but the imagination is not.’
This tale of
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Françoise Gilot
French painter (1921–2023)
Françoise Gaime Gilot (26 November 1921 – 6 June 2023) was a French painter.[1] Gilot was an accomplished artist, notably in watercolors and ceramics, and a bestselling memoirist of the book Life with Picasso.
Gilot's artwork is showcased in more than a dozen leading museums including the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.[2] In 2021 her painting Paloma à la Guitare, a 1965 portrait of her daughter, sold for $1.3 million at Sotheby's in London.[3]
Gilot first made her mark in the post-war milieu of artists who redefined the European artistic landscape; her career then went on to span an impressive eight decades. Delving into the realms of mythology, symbolism, and the power of memory, Gilot's work explores complex philosophical ideas with spontaneity and freedom.[4]
Gilot is also known for her romantic partnership with Pablo Picasso as well as her later marriage to Jonas Salk, the American researcher who developed the fi
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Bates College
Françoise Gilot (French, 1921-2023)
Gilot was a painter whose work was often unfairly overshadowed by her relationship with Pablo Picasso, whom she met at 21 when the artist was 61. She was already a notable painter before they became romantically involved. Introduced to art and culture at a young age by her parents, Gilot attended the Sorbonne, the British Institute in Paris, and Cambridge University in philosophy, English literature, and international law. In her art practice, Gilot created organic figures as opposed to the angular lines of the Cubist style popular with other French Modernists.
Photographed by Robert Capa alongside Picasso, she asserts herself as a prominent artist of her own accord. Gilot would later receive the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 1990, join the Board of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California, and write a memoir, Life with Picasso—the publication of which Picasso tried to block. She continued to paint until her death in June 2023 at the age of 101.
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