Francoise Gilotartist with a notable career whose works hang in more than a dozen museums, including the Metropolitan and MoMA in New York and the Center Pompidou in Paris, writer and for a decade together with Pablo Picassowith whom he had two children, Claude and Palomaha passed away this tuesday in a hospital in Manhattan (New York).
His death at 101 years It has been confirmed to ‘The New York Times’ by Aurelia Engel, another daughter she had in a brief marriage with the artist Luc Simon, who has reported that Gilot had lung and heart problems.
The death has turned the gaze towards an artist in her own right, who loved Picasso passionately and at 21 years old, 40 less than him, After meeting him in 1943 at the Le Catalan restaurant in Paris, she gave herself up to a relationship that she once defined as “a catastrophe that he did not want to avoid”.
It was a relationship full of love, passion and also turbulence. Gilot was the only woman who abandoned the Spanish painter. And she was someone who showed herself determined to escape the lengthening shadow of genius and able to do it. She also did Taking charge of your own narrativeespecially with the publication in 1964 of the book ‘Life with Picasso’, which he wrote with Carlton Lake. The work, the fundamental basis of the film ‘Surviving Picasso’, was a bestseller, but it infuriated Picasso so much that he tried (unsuccessfully) to prevent its publication in France and ended up permanently breaking ties with her and her two children. .
love and art
Gilot had been born into a prosperous family in Neuilly-sur-Seine, just outside Paris. He broke with his overbearing father’s wishes to pursue science or law and after studying literature and philosophy in Paris and Cambridge he entered the world of art. Gilot, who had picked up his first brush at age 3, had already exhibited in Paris by the time he met Picasso, who abandoned Dora Maar for her.
Thus began 10 years of love and art, years in which they both created and in which she related to the entire Picasso circle, including Matisse, Giacometti, Chagall, Braque… On one occasion he said that they helped him grow and gain confidence. “I realized: If they are so big, then I’m not so small.& rdquor ;, he once explained. “lions mate with lionsthey do not mate with mice & rdquor ;, he said on another occasion.
They were also years in which she was personal witness to Picasso’s problematic treatment of women, which in recent years has revived the reexamination of the figure of the author of ‘Gernika’. And although Gilot defined him as someone from “extraordinary kindness& rdquor ;, also in his book he recalled that he treated women as “goddesses or doormats & rdquor;. He also recalled dark episodes, like the time he brought a cigarette to her to burn her, or another time when he told her that she counted for him no more than the dust that accumulated on a pile of rubbish, to which she replied. “The difference is that I’m the type of dust that doesn’t like to be swept away, the type that leaves when it wants to.”
When she decided to break the relationship and announced it to him, he told her: “Do you think someone is going to be interested in you? They will never do it just for you: even if you think people appreciate you, it will just be a kind of curiosity they will have for a person whose life touched mine so intimately.” But he was wrong.
Gilot, with his own abstract colorist style, continued to paint. He wrote. He also continued to love. After her brief marriage to Simon Gilot she met and married Jonas Salk, the virologist who helped eradicate polio. She moved with him to California, where she later came to preside over the Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California.
Last year, in an interview she offered to the ‘Times’, Gilot explained to the journalist: “As young women sand taught us to keep quiet. We were taught early on that second place is easier than first. You tell yourself it’s okay, but it’s not okay. Is It is important that we learn to express ourselves, to say what we like, what we want& rdquor ;. She did it.
Although she lost sight in her left eye, she continued to paint until she was in her nineties. And a year ago she finally managed to have one of her paintings, a portrait of her daughter Paloma with a guitar, exceed the price of one million dollars at auction.
“If you really want to live you have to risk living on the edge, otherwise life is not worth living& rdquor ;, Gilot once said. “When you open yourself to risk you will also experience bad things but mainly you will learn a lot and you will live and understand more and more. More important, you won’t get bored. The worst thing is getting bored & rdquor ;.
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