When Picasso was introduced to Francoise Gilot by a mutual friend, actor Alain Cuny, the world-famous artist laughed at the idea of such a pretty girl being a painter. Indeed, Gilot, wearing a green turban, was attractive and fashionable, a worldly, cutting-edge young woman already building a career of her own. She was both creator and muse, a radical idea to Picasso, despite his relationship with fellow artist Dora Maar. By the end of this brief, history-making conversation Picasso invited Gilot and her friend Geneviève to visit him at his studio the very next day.
The year was 1943 and Paris was still occupied by the Nazis. Though banned from exhibiting his work under the fascists, Picasso was more famous than ever. In her memoir, Gilot described knowing his work “so well” that Maar’s face was familiar, even recognizing his studio from photographs in magazines. Less a fan and more an avid consumer of art, Gilot was drawn to Picasso’s mystical talent. The same year, Gilot showed her first exhibit, at just 22 years old.
Before and after her relationship with Picasso, Gilot had an extremely textured, vibrant life. She was born to wealthy French parents who emphasized her education, hoping for a more stable life than being an artist. This led her to obtain degrees from both the Sorbonne and Cambridge but ultimately her defiant spirit and supreme passion for art won out. Like Picasso, Gilot was politically active and anti-fascist, even incurring an arrest for rebelling against the Nazi occupation of Paris. She and her father also helped her Hungarian-Jewish art tutor Endre Rozsda obtain papers to escape the Nazis. While Gilot’s determined, creative attitude was a substantial reason for Picasso to fall in love with her, their similarities also caused their undoing. She could not be tamed.
The pair moved in together in 1946, three years after meeting. They were never married but had two children: Paloma and Claude. After triumphantly leaving Picasso, she was married twice more and had another daughter, Aurélia Engel. Her continued success as an artist brought her many important friends, including Matisse, and took her around the world, providing endless inspiration. For many years, she lived between Paris and southern California, where she served as the chairwoman of USC’s Art Dept. until 1983. Shortly afterward, Gilot moved to Manhattan where she persistently added to her prolific body of work and exhibited until 2021.
In Gilot’s passing last week, we remember a strong and brilliant artist in her own right. It is doubly a perfect opportunity to look back on Picasso’s spirited portrayals of her captivating aura. She was also the only one of Picasso’s women to leave him instead of being left, perhaps proving to be the strongest match in the face of such a powerful man, “an echo of his own nature,” in her words. One of Gilot’s two memoirs Life with Picasso (1964) is an intimately detailed account of the near decade they spent together, two extremely brilliant people falling in and out of love with each other. The brutal honesty of their love story adds yet another layer of depth to our understanding of Picasso: he was playful, he was tough, he was curious. He was more than an artist, and Gilot herself, a force greater than a mere muse.
Courtesy of John Szoke Gallery, New York.