Françoise Gilot, painter whose life, career and work are intimately linked to Pablo Picasso, died Tuesday in New York where she lived, according to information from the New York Times, confirmed by the Picasso Museum in Paris. She was 101 years old and, according to her daughter Aurélia Engel, suffered from “heart and lung disease”.
Françoise Gilot had met Pablo Picasso in Paris in May 1943. A young 21-year-old painter, she was exhibiting her paintings for the first time, while Pablo Picasso, 61, was already at the height of his celebrity. At that time, he was still living a relationship with Dora Maar. But after a few months, he moved in with Françoise Gilot, falling under the spell of this young girl from a good family, born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, with a slender figure, fine features and a tall carriage. .
Driven out of Spain by Franco, the Andalusian artist lived isolated in France, under the close surveillance of the Germans who occupied Paris. The darkness of those years, marked by the war and his stormy relationship with Dora Maar, was followed by a lighter and more luminous era. At first episodic, their relationship took a new turn with the birth of Claude four years after their meeting, then of Paloma in 1949. She followed Picasso to Golfe-Juan, then moved with him to Vallauris. On the canvases of the Spanish master, she becomes a radiant Woman-Flower. She hardly resumes her work on her side, in a more figurative style, then minimalist, but will remain for a long time in the eyes of the world the companion. However, the couple separated in 1955. She freed herself. Françoise Gilot will explain it in a book a few years later, Living with Picasso, which will earn her a lot of interest and new anger from her former companion. To the point that she will not go to the funeral of her former lover in 1973.
Always admiring the artist, Françoise Gilot does not spare the man she describes as “dominator” and “invading”. “Intellectually, she says, we got along well, humanly, it was hell. He wasn’t mean but cruel, it was masochistic sadism. (…) In the end, my youth became unbearable to him, and I changed too.
In an interview with Paris Match in 2012, she tells how their first steps were difficult. She, a young woman out of adolescence and concerned about her independence. He, possessive and jealous when their meeting did not put an end to his adventures, especially with Dora Maar. “I wanted my freedom,” she explained. I resisted him. In 2020, a documentary will baptize her The woman who says no.
After her separation from Picasso, Françoise Gilot married another painter, Luc Simon, then Jonas Salk, a New York biologist living in California. At the same time, she will continue to testify to the life of the master, through interviews or books, like the one she devoted to Picasso’s rivalry with Matisse. To celebrate the artist’s 100th birthday, who became an American, the Esrine museum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence devoted a retrospective to Françoise Gilot on her “French Years” in 2021. The same year, Paloma à la Guitare (1965), one of his paintings, sold for $1.3 million at Sotheby’s. We see the influence of the master but also the tenacity of his liberated muse.
For years, Françoise Gilot will have practiced to make her old lover lie who threw in her face, the day she left him: “Do you think people will be interested in you? They will never do it for who you are. Even if you imagine that they love you, they will only do it out of curiosity, for the person whose life has been so close to mine.
