Pratiksha Shome
Francoise Gilot, who rose above her companion Pablo Picasso’s shadow to find success as a stand-alone artist, passed away at the age of 101. A talented painter, Gilot also published a best-selling memoir in 1964 that chronicled her turbulent relationship with the Spanish modern art titan. She spoke of the “hell” of being Picasso’s mistress and inspiration for his art. Gilot was referred to as “one of the most striking artists of her generation” by France’s Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak.
Malak remarked that because of how bright and motivating she was, her “disappearance plunges the world of art into great sadness.” Arianna Huffington, the creator of the Huffington Post and a biographer of Pablo Picasso, commended Gilot for “the insights, love, and wisdom you brought into my life.”
Gilot, who was born in 1921 in a suburb of Paris to a merchant father and a watercolour artist mother, opened her first workshop in her grandmother’s home. Her father, who was apprehensive about her becoming an artist, insisted that she study philosophy, law, and English. But in secret, she continued to paint.
She was briefly detained for taking part in an anti-Nazi demonstration beneath the Arc de Triomphe while she was residing in occupied Paris during World War Two. She had a romantic and professional relationship with the married Picasso, who was 40 years older than she was, when they first met at the age of 21 in a restaurant.They had two children together for the better part of a decade before she left him.
Pablo was Gilot’s greatest love, but you had to take precautions to keep oneself safe, she stated in Janet Hawley’s Artists in Conversation from 2021. “I did. I escaped before I perished. The Spaniard failed in his attempts to stop her from publishing her honest book, Life with Picasso, and to sever all ties with Gilot and their two kids, Claude and Paloma.
The book served as the basis for the 1996 movie of the same name, which starred Natascha McElhone as Gilot and Anthony Hopkins as Picasso. Despite Picasso allegedly pressuring galleries to stop exhibiting her work, Gilot persisted in doing so, and as a result, her pieces are now held in collections like the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
A 1965 photograph of her daughter Paloma à la Guitare that was auctioned off in 2021 fetched $1.3 million (£1 million). She eventually relocated to the US, got married twice, notably to Jonas Salk, the inventor of the US polio vaccine, had another child, and took on the role of chairwoman of the fine arts department at the University of Southern California. Gilot, who was 96 at the time and was an avid traveller and artist, published a collection of sketches from journeys to India, Senegal, and Venice in 2018.
Source: BBC
