Francoise Gilot | Ackerman's Fine Art Katherine February 9, 2016 Francoise Gilot was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France in 1921. She would become an important artist and author that would influence generations after her. Her mother was an artist and began teaching her daughter art at the age of five. Her father would push her to get an education and influence her writing talents. She attended Cambridge University, the British Institute in Paris and the Sorbonne. Gilot would study law, but she could not ignore her true love of art. She would graduate with a degree in Philosophy in 1938 and English in 1939. In 1943, Francoise Gilot met Pablo Picasso and would soon become a student, muse and lover to him. He exposed her to an artist circle made of such notables as Braque, Miro, Gertrude Stein and Simone de Beauvoir. She also met Henri Matisse and the two became good friends. By the 1950’s, Gilot’s style began to move away from cubist influences of Picasso and developed into a more organic style all her own.

She created works on paper and layers of gouache. She was also becoming interested in the American art scene. In the 1960s, she traveled to the United States and exhibited her work. Francoise Gilot is known for a vibrant color palette. Francoise Gilot is also an accomplished writer and poet. She authored and illustrated books, many of which were about the artists in her life. She worked at the University of California at Idyllwild as a visiting professor of the Department of Painting, Drawing and Etching. She maintains a studio in New York City and in Paris. She works on as many as six canvases at a time. Francoise Gilot | Biography | GALLERY M Francoise Gilot Francoise Gilot (1921 - ) After 60 years as an artist, Francoise Gilot continues to conquer canvas with her own language of form and color. Her work, done in a variety of media, holds a vital place in the international art world. Gilot is included in the permanent collections of the Musee Picasso in Antibes, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Musee de Tel Aviv in Israel, the Women's Museum in Washington D.C.

and Bibliotheque Nationale and Musee d'art Moderne in Paris. In 1990, she received the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, the French government's highest honor, for her work as a painter, writer and feminist. Born in 1921 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Gilot, at age 5 declared that she would become a painter. Her mother tutored her with watercolor and India ink. Formal studies began in 1934, and, over the objections of her father who envisioned a career in law or science; she pursued her interest in art. Her first exhibit was held during the Nazi occupation of Paris. Sadly, her earliest drawings and watercolors were lost in a German bombing raid. In 1943, Gilot met Pablo Picasso, 40 years her senior, at a Left Bank restaurant and they began a decade-long relationship. She joined his circle of legendary artists and intelligentsia including Braque, Miro, Gertrude Stein and Simone de Beauvoir. In 1946, she met Henri Matisse and became a friend and admirer.

He said, "Whenever Francoise draws a bird, no matter how remote from reality it may be, it flies." Gilot's career took off in the late 1950s when she broke away from Picasso's influence to develop a more personal style. This phase of her work was said to have created a bridge between the School of Paris of the 1940s and '50s and the contemporary American art scene. Gilot began to explore works on paper and the intricate layers of gouache. In the 1960s, she traveled to the United States to exhibit her art. With a degree in philosophy from the University of Paris and another in English Literature from Cambridge University, Gilot became an accomplished writer and poet. She authored and illustrated several books including Life with Picasso written with Carlton Lake (1964), The Fugitive Eye (1976, Interface: the Painter and the Mask (1983), Francoise Gilot: An Artists Journey (1987) and Matisse and Picasso: A Friendship in Art (1990). While living with Picasso, Gilot had two children, Claude and Paloma.

Later, she married Luc Simon and had a second daughter Aurelia. Her children appear as the subjects of many of her paintings. Other themes include birds, emblems, Buddhist and Hopi symbols, Greek mythology and "floating" spaces. Gilot's childhood in France and travels to Greece and the Orient are also subjects of many of her works.Later in life, Gilot married Dr. Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine. Now in her early eighties, she continues to paint at studios in both Paris and New York. GALLERY M is pleased to represent this private collection of Francoise Gilot's work exclusively in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain Region. View her available works . First Name Francoise Gilot | BB&T Corporation | ZoomInfo.com BB&T Corporation + Get 10 Free Contacts a Month Please agree to the terms and conditions I agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . I understand that I will receive a subscription to ZoomInfo Grow at no charge in exchange for downloading and installing the ZoomInfo Contact Contributor utility which, among other features, involves sharing my business contacts as well as headers and signature blocks from emails that I receive.

United States Company Description BB&T is one of the largest financial services holding companies in the U.S. with $221.9 billion in assets and market capitalization of $29.0 billion as of June 30, 2016. Based in Winston-Salem, N.C., the company operates 2,249 financial centers in 15 stat ... more Find other employees at this company (27,218) Background Information Web References (19 Total References) BB&T sponsoring return visit of Renowned ... BB&T sponsoring return visit of Renowned Artist Francoise Gilot BB&T - News Releases BB&T sponsoring return visit of Renowned Artist Francoise Gilot ... NEWNAN, Ga., Sept. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- The Centre for Performing and Visual Arts will present an invitation-only gala reception, gallery dedication and exhibition preview on Friday, Sept. 29, to celebrate the return of artist Francoise Gilot to the area for six days of art and education. The highlight of the evening will be the naming of the Centre's gallery in honor of the internationally renowned painter.

The Coweta County School System is hosting Gilot's visit, which is being underwritten by a grant from BB&T. In addition to the gallery naming, exhibit preview and private reception, other events scheduled include a public lecture by Mel Yoakum, director of the F. Gilot Archives; an open exhibit of Gilot's paintings titled, An Intimate Odyssey, Paintings of Francoise Gilot, 1941-2006; and a group discussion between Gilot and art students from area middle and high schools. ... Gilot, 84, was a contemporary of art icons Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, and is the mother of artist Claude Picasso and jewelry designer Paloma Picasso. ... Gilot first visited Newnan in January 2005 for an exclusive six-week showing of her works at the Centre. "We are delighted that Francoise Gilot has accepted our invitation to return to Newnan and the Centre," said Don Nixon, director of the Centre. ... "On behalf of members of the Board of Education of Coweta County, I would like to thank BB&T for its contribution in support of Gilot's return visit. ... Francoise Gilot is an international treasure.

BB&T sponsoring return visit of Renowned ... BB&T sponsoring return visit of Renowned Artist Francoise Gilot ... NEWNAN, Ga., Sept. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- The Centre for Performing and Visual Arts will present an invitation-only gala reception, gallery dedication and exhibition preview on Friday, Sept. 29, to celebrate the return of artist Francoise Gilot to the area for six days of art and education. The highlight of the evening will be the naming of the Centre's gallery in honor of the internationally renowned painter. The Coweta County School System is hosting Gilot's visit, which is being underwritten by a grant from BB&T. In addition to the gallery naming, exhibit preview and private reception, other events scheduled include a public lecture by Mel Yoakum, director of the F. Gilot Archives; an open exhibit of Gilot's paintings titled, An Intimate Odyssey, Paintings of Francoise Gilot, 1941-2006; and a group discussion between Gilot and art students from area middle and high schools. ...

Gilot, 84, was a contemporary of art icons Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, and is the mother of artist Claude Picasso and jewelry designer Paloma Picasso. ... Gilot first visited Newnan in January 2005 for an exclusive six-week showing of her works at the Centre. "We are delighted that Francoise Gilot has accepted our invitation to return to Newnan and the Centre," said Don Nixon, director of the Centre. ... "On behalf of members of the Board of Education of Coweta County, I would like to thank BB&T for its contribution in support of Gilot's return visit. ... Francoise Gilot is an international treasure. BB&T sponsoring return visit of Renowned ... BB&T sponsoring return visit of Renowned Artist Francoise Gilot PRNewswire ... NEWNAN, Ga., Sept. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- The Centre for Performing and Visual Arts will present an invitation-only gala reception, gallery dedication and exhibition preview on Friday, Sept. 29, to celebrate the return of artist Francoise Gilot to the area for six days of art and education. The highlight of the evening will be the naming of the Centre's gallery in honor of the internationally renowned painter.

The Coweta County School System is hosting Gilot's visit, which is being underwritten by a grant from BB&T. In addition to the gallery naming, exhibit preview and private reception, other events scheduled include a public lecture by Mel Yoakum, director of the F. Gilot Archives; an open exhibit of Gilot's paintings titled, An Intimate Odyssey, Paintings of Francoise Gilot, 1941-2006; and a group discussion between Gilot and art students from area middle and high schools. ... Gilot, 84, was a contemporary of art icons Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, and is the mother of artist Claude Picasso and jewelry designer Paloma Picasso. ... Gilot first visited Newnan in January 2005 for an exclusive six-week showing of her works at the Centre. "We are delighted that Francoise Gilot has accepted our invitation to return to Newnan and the Centre," said Don Nixon, director of the Centre. ... "On behalf of members of the Board of Education of Coweta County, I would like to thank BB&T for its contribution in support of Gilot's return visit. ... Francoise Gilot is an international treasure.

BB&T sponsoring return visit of Renowned ... Picasso's Muse is 93, Paints Every Day, and Just Published a New Book Princes Mabel's Mission to End Child Marriage Picasso's Muse is 93, Paints Every Day, and Just Published a New Book With a new book and over 5,800 bodies of art to date, Francoise Gilot knows how to be both master and muse. Most Popular By Lesley M.M. Blume Nov 17, 2015 In her new book About Women , painter Francoise Gilot reminds us again why she was never in Picasso's shadow. Pablo Picasso had a reputation for captivating and then subsuming his paramours—with one glaring exception: French artist Françoise Gilot. Just 21 years old when she met him, Gilot was a strong, definite presence. Her independence rankled Picasso, but it appears to have also worked on him like catnip. Throughout their nearly 10-year relationship, he liberally documented her image in paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Gilot did gradually become part of the Picasso machine, acting as assistant and archivist and bearing two of his children, but she never wholly succumbed to him.

For hours every day she locked herself in her own studio and painted, shutting out his world and building her own. Robert Capa / International Center of Photography / Magnum Photos Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Eventually they parted ways, but their fraught love affair has long captivated the public. It has been the subject of several books (including Gilot's own best-selling memoir, Life with Picasso ) and the Merchant- Ivory film Surviving Picasso . (Gilot describes the movie, which starred Anthony Hopkins as Picasso and Natascha McElhone as Gilot, as "idiotic.") Magic Games / 1978 (Oil On Canvas) / Gilot Francoise / Bridgeman Images Most Popular Yet she not only survived Picasso, she thrived, going on to create hundreds of canvases, some of which have landed in museums and private collections. Gilot's total body of work, by her estimate, includes 1,800 paintings and 4,000 to 5,000 drawings. Now 93, Gilot remains as prolific as ever, sometimes working 20 hours a day.

Dozens of her canvases lean in jagged bunches against the walls of her New York City studio; an oversize abstract painting (one of her works from the 1960s) hangs above her fireplace. She sometimes works on several pieces at once, painting one while the oils dry on the others. "At the moment, though, I am making drawings," she says, taking a seat in her studio. Light pours through a towering floor-to- ceiling window, bringing out the green in her eyes. Everything about her remains sleek and angular: her lean figure; that famous face, with its Masai-shield cheekbones and long, thin, delicately wrought nose; her bobbed hair, with not a strand out of place. Tea / 1952 (Oil On Board) / Gilot Francoise / Christie's Images / Bridgeman Images Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Nor has the passage of time blunted or softened her wit or her opinions. Gilot's new book, About Women (Nan A.

Talese, $26), out this month, is a memoir in dialogue form with her friend and co-author, novelist Lisa Alther, and it reveals her thoughts on feminine allure, the never-ending battle between the sexes, and puritanical American attitudes. In the book's pages and in person Gilot is candid and very French, despite decades of living in America. "On the whole, American women can be too rigid," she says, in luxuriously accented English. Here in the States, there is much "more combativeness and less kindness between the sexes." In France, men and women know how to simply enjoy one another's company. What's more, French women know how to take a compliment. "So what if a man whistles at you on the street?" she asks. "Enjoy it." Objectification be damned: "Feminine beauty is a gift to be shared with the world." Francoise Gilot Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Other female artists have long complained of a gulf in the art world, and those who have been romantically associated with legendary male artists such as Picasso have sometimes had an especially difficult time making their mark. Asked if she ever felt a disadvantage, Gilot states that the gender gap has been exaggerated.

Women, especially pretty ones, often expect doors to fly open, she says. The only way to reach the top strata of the art world—or any profession—is to "work like hell" and have a unique vision. "Are you capable of inventing something new?" she asks. "That's where it starts." Kevin Sweeney / Studio D Not that the gatekeepers make it easy, even for women of vision. Despite her impressive career, Gilot herself is still likely best known for her association with Picasso. Does it bother her to be categorized as a "muse"? She offers a wry smile. "They can call me whatever they want." If she has been misunderstood, she adds, perhaps it's because she has spent her entire adult life devoted to her work, rather than cultivating publicity and crafting the public's impression of her. "I avoided biographers. I did not attend cocktail par- ties. I was working instead." And her work, she believes, will speak for itself. Gjon Mili / Life Picture Collection / Getty Images It seems an admirably optimistic attitude for a woman who came into her own in an aggressively paternalistic milieu.

Picasso used to tell Gilot that there were only two kinds of women: doormats and goddesses. Given that choice, Gilot knows where she stands. "I am not tall. I am not impressive," she says with a laugh. "But I am strong without annoying other people. I do not impose myself." Being a goddess, she maintains, is about comporting oneself a certain way and always remaining above the fray. "A goddess is a goddess," she concludes, "because she sees things from higher up." More from Town & Country: Life After Picasso: Françoise Gilot - Vogue Vogue Life After Picasso: Françoise Gilot April 27, 2012 11:27 am email Expand Beautiful, feisty, and fiercely independent at 90, muse and artist Françoise Gilot is exhibiting her own paintings alongside her famous ex’s. When Françoise Gilot decided to take her two young children and leave Pablo Picasso in 1953, ending their ten-year relationship, the infuriated genius told her she was “headed straight for the desert” because no one would ever have more than “a kind of curiosity . . .

about a person whose life has touched mine so intimately.” He was wrong. Life after Picasso has been a continuing adventure for Françoise—two marriages (the second a 25-year union with Jonas Salk, another twentieth-century genius, who developed the polio vaccine), a third child, many friendships, two best-selling books, and a successful career as an artist who continues, at the age of 90, to paint every day. Next month, for the first time ever, a selection of her paintings and drawings will be shown in a joint exhibition with Picasso’s. The show, titled “Picasso and Françoise Gilot [1943–1953],” at the Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue, is the fourth in a Gagosian series of Picasso blockbusters. Françoise agreed to cooperate because it deals with the decade when she and Picasso were together, and, as she tells me in her slightly imperious way, “I thought that was an interesting idea.” We are in her apartment off Central Park West, her U.S. base for the last 20 years, during which she has divided her time between New York and Paris.

There’s a large, double-height studio with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, north-facing windows, and two easels for her current work: abstract oils in resonant colors, which she paints without preliminary sketches and with both hands, alternating between left and right. Erect, alert, and somewhat aloof, she’s a handsome and impressive woman, a presence. Before we start to talk, her eye falls on a Xerox I’ve brought along of one of Picasso’s many paintings of her, and she says, firmly, in her clear French-accented English, “I’m not going to talk about Picasso. I have done my duty to those memories. I have had a great career as an artist myself, you know. I’m not here just because I’ve spent time with Picasso.” She brings out two oversize volumes documenting her oeuvre, which now numbers more than 1,600 paintings and 4,000 to 5,000 works on paper. As we talk, though, Picasso keeps finding his way into the conversation, even if Françoise characteristically refuses to let him dominate it. Her early life, as she describes it, was privileged but lonely.

An only child of haute bourgeois, highly intellectual Parisian parents—her father was an agronomist who developed several chemical firms; her mother was a ceramic artist—she decided at the age of five that she, too, was going to be an artist, but “with a big A.” An active and adventurous tomboy who rode horseback every morning in the Bois de Boulogne, she was tutored at home until she was ten. By the time she went to school, “I was ahead of other children my age, and I didn’t think the same way. I did not submit to rules if I did not see they had any meaning.” Brilliant and willful, she entered law school because her father insisted on it, but when war came and Paris fell to the Nazis, she dropped law—from then on, she was painting full time. The famous meeting with Picasso—when he brought a bowl of cherries to the table at Le Catalan where she was having dinner with her school friend and fellow artist Geneviève Aliquot and the film actor Alain Cuny—took place in 1943. She was 21; Picasso was 61.

“I really think that if I had met Picasso during peacetime,” she tells me, “nothing would have happened.” Most of the men her age were at war. She admired the courage that had made Picasso refuse to leave occupied France. She herself had been arrested in a student demonstration, and like everyone else in Paris at that time, she felt both doomed and fearless. Although she was well aware of Picasso’s history with women (he was dining that night with Dora Maar, his soon-to-be-discarded mistress, who was looking daggers at their table), she wasn’t a bit afraid or in awe of him. A relationship with him, as she wrote in her 1964 book Life with Picasso, was a “catastrophe I didn’t want to avoid.” After 1964, anyone who wanted to be friends with Picasso, or to be admitted to his studio, had to denounce Françoise’s memoir. One of the more prominent denouncers was John Richardson, who would go on to write a masterly multi-volume biography of Picasso.

“This wretched book,” he wrote about Life with Picasso in a scathing attack in The New York Review of Books, was “indiscretion masquerading as candor” and “chip-on-shoulder malice.” So, how has Françoise dealt with the fact that Richardson is curating the Picasso/Gilot show at Gagosian? “Well,” she tells me, “he changed his mind, little by little. In his first volume on Picasso, he said that everything I wrote was lies. In the second”—a burst of cackling laughter from Françoise—“he wrote that what I said is the truth, but it’s not so important. In the third, he wrote that what I said is extremely important. He changed his mind about me, which I think is quite nice of him.” But Picasso was gone by that time, I say. “To change your mind about something is always difficult,” she says.

“I think that people who are big enough to admit they were wrong can be counted on your fingers.” When I call John Richardson, he suggests it might have been better to wait until Picasso had died before publishing her book, but that the book itself is “fascinating and brilliant, and crucial to the understanding of Picasso.” As for the upcoming show, which was organized jointly by Richardson and Valentina Castellani, a Gagosian gallery director, he says, “One of the things we want to establish is how she bounces off him, but how he bounces a little bit off her, too. She drew very well, and she was a serious and extremely professional painter. . . . I don’t want to make this another mistress show.” There are no Picassos in Françoise’s apartment. Some years ago, she sold the only one she had, the best of the La Femme-fleur series, in which he painted her as a semi-abstract, graceful, pale green-and-blue but quite un-flowerly flower.

He painted it in 1946, soon after taking her to meet Matisse, who had made him jealous by saying he would like to paint a portrait of her with green hair and a light-blue complexion. Françoise had loved Matisse’s work since she was fifteen, and she felt much more akin to it than to Picasso’s. She saw it the same day she saw Picasso’s Guernica, which was on view for the first time at the 1937 Paris International Exposition. “I fell in love with Matisse that day, not with Picasso,” she tells me. (Her second book, Matisse and Picasso, is a penetrating study of the artists’ complex relationship.) “Matisse was my God. I’m a French artist, that’s for sure. I am color-oriented and what you might call a composer. I am not pouring my guts out; I keep them inside.” Her other hero in the early days was Braque, so it’s not by chance that she has a Braque still life on her library wall. “There is so much in it that is not said but implied,” she tells me.

“He doesn’t disgorge his intestine in front of me.” The pull of Picasso’s work, however, was inescapable for any artist in the forties and fifties, and you can’t help seeing it in Françoise’s paintings—the combination of abstraction and figuration, the deep saturated colors, the occasional violence of her clashing forms. But she was already an artist when they met, “painting more like Braque” than Picasso, according to Richardson. In addition to being Picasso’s model and muse, Françoise was his intellectual equal. He wanted her to stay up late at night with him, often until two or three in the morning, talking and arguing about his work. Her independence, her directness, and her penetrating insights fascinated and annoyed him, and nourished his insatiable appetite for life. “Art is not a communicable disease,” she says when I ask about Picasso’s influence on her. “It’s not like TB. You have it or you don’t. And if you have it, you have to develop it yourself. I was interested in my work.” Françoise was not particularly interested in having children, but Picasso insisted.

Claude was born in 1947 and Paloma in 1949. “You might say I look feminine,” she says, “but inside, I’m still a boy. I hated being pregnant.” (Picasso and Gilot couldn’t marry because Olga, his first wife, refused to give him a divorce.) Though fiercely devoted to the children—she would have another daughter in 1956 with artist Luc Simon, whom she did marry— Françoise didn’t believe in overprotective motherhood. “I don’t think the parent and child should be so intimate that it becomes a jail for the child. I’ve tried to help my children become themselves. Paloma has been working with Tiffany’s for 31 years. She found what she wanted to do, and she’s done it.” Claude, who keeps an apartment in the same New York block as his mother’s, runs the Picasso Administration in Paris, and Aurélia, Françoise’s third child, is an architect who lives in Boston and manages the Gilot archives. “When I left Picasso, I knew I would have a lot of enemies,” she says. “They were already there, putting banana peels under my feet all the time.

One of the reasons I came to the United States in 1961 was that I thought people would be more fair here, and I had also noticed that about 80 percent of my collectors were American.” She came more and more often, traveling to different cities where she had gallery shows and staying in the Stanhope Hotel when she was in New York—it had artists’ studios on the top floor. On a trip to Los Angeles in 1969, a friend introduced her to Jonas Salk. She had no interest in meeting him—she thought scientists were boring. But soon afterward, he came to New York and invited her to have tea at Rumplemayer’s. “He didn’t have tea; he ordered pistachio and tangerine ice cream,” she recalls. “I thought, Well, a scientist who orders pistachio and tangerine ice cream at five o’clock in the afternoon is not like everybody else!” He pursued her to Paris and a few months later asked her to marry him. She balked.

“I said, ‘I just don’t need to be married,’ and he said, ‘In my position, I cannot not be married.’ He gave me two pieces of paper and told me to write down the reasons why I didn’t want to get married.” She complied. Her list included: “I can’t live more than six months with one person”; “I have my own children”; “I have my career as a painter and have to go here and there”; “I’m not always in the mood to talk. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.” Salk looked at the list and said he found it “quite congenial.” They were married in 1970 and were together until he died in 1995.

“It worked very well,” she says, “because after all we got along very well.” Before I leave, I bring out the Xerox she had seen earlier, of a 1951 Picasso painting called Woman Drawing (Françoise Gilot), a picture she had once described as “the best portrait Picasso made of me.” I tell her that the painting now belongs to Phyllis Hattis, the art historian/private dealer and widow of William Rubin, who curated four groundbreaking Picasso shows when he was the director of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art. Phyllis is a good friend of mine, I say, and she would love for me to bring you over to see the painting—she is not lending it to the Gagosian show. “I know it very well,” Françoise says. “I saw it being painted.” We go to see it a month later in Phyllis’s art-filled penthouse overlooking the East River. Françoise hasn’t seen the painting for many years, and at first she seems not to want to focus on it.

She admires the two Dubuffets, which bring back memories of her 1944 meeting with him (“When I told Pablo I had seen Dubuffet, he was furious”); the big aluminum relief by Frank Stella; the African tribal sculptures and Oceanic figures; the many Matisses and Mirós—and the Picassos. She falls silent in front of a large 1952–53 ink drawing of Paloma as a baby, and I notice that she’s not really looking at it. She’s looking at a small drawing on the grand piano that shows a nude and highly eroticized Jacqueline Roque, the woman who replaced her in Picasso’s life. We finally sit down in front of Woman Drawing, which hangs alone on a long wall, flanked by two masterpieces of tribal art. “Well,” she says, after a longish silence, “the breasts are going up instead of down. That’s optimistic!” Her raucous laugh rings out. “But something I never understood is why on earth does that pencil I’m holding have a string attached to the table?

I never used a pencil like that, so it’s pure imagination.” Phyllis mentions that a prominent art historian once wrote that the pencil was tied this way so her children wouldn’t knock it off the table. Françoise makes a derisive noise. “That’s hot air. Pablo imagined that pencil. It had nothing to do with anything he saw. He had such a fantastic visual memory, and most of the time he drew from what was in his mind.” She stands up, moves closer to the painting, squinting, then sits down again. “For each of the women in his life, he had a kind of leitmotif, like in Wagner. For me, it was blue and green—although here, I have only green. You can hear it, if you like. For Marie-Thérèse Walter, it was lavender, lemon yellow, and pale green. Black was usually associated with Dora Maar, but he played more with form than with color for her. Dora Maar had both eyes on the same side—with me, they are on each side of my nose, thank God.” More laughter.

“It’s because I have a very regular face, and usually I’m in control of my emotions.” Picasso made hundreds of paintings of Françoise and thousands of drawings and prints. She can be a flower, a bowl of cherries, a knight in armor, “and when there’s a lobster, that’s me, too, because he always said I had the bones outside to protect myself.” Phyllis says that to her knowledge, this painting is the only one that shows Françoise as an artist, without the children, working alone in her studio. Two years later, she was gone—the only one of Picasso’s women who left him, and the only one who went on to have a rich and rewarding life of her own. “I knew if I didn’t leave Pablo, he would devour me,” she says. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Picasso’s longtime dealer, who had been showing her work, too, ended her contract when “Picasso said, ‘It’s her or me.’ Picasso was waging war on me, a very dirty war, because he had all the power.” But Kahnweiler helped her find another gallery in Paris, and Gilot has continued to grow as an artist.

Dorothea McKenna Elkon, her close friend since the 1960s and her New York dealer for the past two decades, tells me that a large Gilot oil painting can bring up to $200,000, and that four of her works are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Three weeks after the Picasso/Gilot opening at Gagosian on April 28, a Gilot retrospective goes on view at the Musée du Vieux Nîmes, running concurrently with a show of Picasso’s bullfighting images at the Musée des Cultures Taurines, by the same curator (Aleth Jourdan) and in the same city. “He did them,” she tells me, “during the years we were together.” We’ve been talking for nearly four hours, and Françoise seems as fresh as when we arrived. We discuss what she calls her “ancestors” in painting—Gauguin and van Gogh—and she adds, decisively, “I could live without Rubens or Cézanne.” When I ask if she looks at contemporary art, she says, “Overall, I like Jasper Johns. For me, he’s the best.

His gray paintings, precisely. He understands what gray is all about.” I am struck once again by Françoise’s vivid presence, and by her ability to live entirely in the present. “You always survive if you think you should,” she says. “I didn’t ask permission to be who I am.” Françoise Gilot: Life with and without Picasso | All media content | DW.COM | 09.06.2015 Culture Françoise Gilot: Life with and without Picasso Picasso wasn't used to being turned down. Françoise Gilot, however, did just that - the only one of the famous painter's partners to leave him. "Picasso raged," begins Malte Herwig's new book, "The Woman Who Says No." An icon of photography Robert Capa snaps his friend Picasso with his mistress, Françoise Gilot, in 1948. She walks gleefully along the beach, while he trails, looking at the camera. Living in Picasso's shadows Gilot most certainly was not. The book "The Woman Who Says No" tells the story of the famed artist's muse of 10 years.

The young woman and the master painter "He was the master, she the muse. He had discovered her when she was 22 years old, young and unaffected. Virginal, as a white canvas he desired to fill," the author Malte Herwig writes of the encounter between the two. The book describes how the towering artist, and his equally large ego, could be won over by a single smile from his muse. The big ego "The most famous painter of his, and maybe all, time was a gifted self-promoter," Herwig writes in "The Woman Who Says No." "Besides himself and the art, there was little room in Picasso's life - the tyranny of genius degraded all other people to extras." Only Françoise Gilot could break this logic. No easy beginning "Girls who look like that cannot be painters," Picasso is supposed to have said about Gilot. Then he invited her to his studio - at least this is how the story is told today by the 93-year old Gilot, in one of the interviews the author conducted in her Paris and New York studios. Gilot continues to paint each day. This 1943 picture is titled "Portrait en noir," oil on canvas.

A real artist Over 75 years Gilot etched more than 5,000 drawings and 1,600 paintings. For the past 50 years, her work has regularly featured in global exhibitions. Most of her works are privately owned. However, some are hung in museums - including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In this self-portrait from 1941, she looks at the viewer with a questioning gaze and eyes wide open. Picasso et moi-même "Picasso and I - the embrace," is the name of this picture from 1948. Here the two are still a happy couple. They never married. Claude, their son and first child together, was born earlier that year, followed a year later by their daughter, Paloma. Françoise reveals she never wanted children, but Picasso persuaded her. Her art, however, she would never give up for Picasso. A confident painter Picasso was her great love, her passion. However, there were limits as to what Gilot was willing to accept. Her proud attitude is clearly visible in this photograph of her at work.

"Ne me touchez pas" (Don't Touch Me) is the name of this work by Gilot. It was her philosophy for life - as a child she would never let anyone get too close to her. First oil painting at 17 "Even Picasso never knew me, despite our 10 years together, because I locked myself up. I never reveal, why should I?" These are her words to Herwig, "in the friendliest of tones, until her resounding laughter broke through the ice." The image shows her at the age of 15 - her first oil painting came two years later. 'No woman leaves a man like me' "That is what Pablo explained to her a few weeks before and fixed her with his dark-but-shining reptilian eyes. A man so rich and famous as he was, the most famous painter in the world, a king of the art world. Yes, some kind of God." Herwig begins his book about Gilot with such playful irony from the perspective of the great master himself - "and she laughed uproariously." The naïve genius "Leave him? There was nothing to laugh about.

He was dead serious." The book manages to offer a completely new perspective of the great Picasso, revealing his failings and thus rendering him more human. Again, there's the warm, endearing gaze of Gilot. "Françoise smiled. That a genius could utter such naïve stuff." Picasso without Gilot Gilot left Picasso in 1953. Shortly after, he painted "Bust of a Woman," which is currently on show at the exhibition "The Century Mark: Tel Aviv Museum of Art Visits Berlin" in the Martin Gropius Bau. The separation also marks a break in the book. Gilot is presented as a 93-year-old woman, full of wisdom. Picasso and the women Gilot is the only woman to have ever successfully left the artist. And survived him. Picasso's last wife, Jacqueline Roque, committed suicide, and Marie-Thérèse Walter hanged herself. The ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova remained married to him until her death in 1955, and the photographer Dora Maar (pictured here, in a painting by Picasso), who had given up her passion for him, went mad.

Regret is a waste of time Gilot is radiant with life, even at 93 years of age. "I knew it would be a disaster, but a disaster that would be worth it," she told Herwig. Regret is a pure waste of time. "It's much more interesting to experience something tragic with a unique man than to lead a wonderful life with a mediocre person." Don't be boring! "If you really want to live, you need to risk something dramatic - otherwise it's not worthwhile," Gilot says. "Above all, you will not be boring. This is the worst thing: being boring." Malte Herwig's book "The Woman Who Says No" is currently only available in German, as "Die Frau, die Nein sagt." Author: Sarah Judith Hofmann / jgt An icon of photography Robert Capa snaps his friend Picasso with his mistress, Françoise Gilot, in 1948. She walks gleefully along the beach, while he trails, looking at the camera. Living in Picasso's shadows Gilot most certainly was not. The book "The Woman Who Says No" tells the story of the famed artist's muse of 10 years.

The young woman and the master painter "He was the master, she the muse. He had discovered her when she was 22 years old, young and unaffected. Virginal, as a white canvas he desired to fill," the author Malte Herwig writes of the encounter between the two. The book describes how the towering artist, and his equally large ego, could be won over by a single smile from his muse. The big ego "The most famous painter of his, and maybe all, time was a gifted self-promoter," Herwig writes in "The Woman Who Says No." "Besides himself and the art, there was little room in Picasso's life - the tyranny of genius degraded all other people to extras." Only Françoise Gilot could break this logic. No easy beginning "Girls who look like that cannot be painters," Picasso is supposed to have said about Gilot. Then he invited her to his studio - at least this is how the story is told today by the 93-year old Gilot, in one of the interviews the author conducted in her Paris and New York studios. Gilot continues to paint each day. This 1943 picture is titled "Portrait en noir," oil on canvas.

A real artist Over 75 years Gilot etched more than 5,000 drawings and 1,600 paintings. For the past 50 years, her work has regularly featured in global exhibitions. Most of her works are privately owned. However, some are hung in museums - including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In this self-portrait from 1941, she looks at the viewer with a questioning gaze and eyes wide open. Picasso et moi-même "Picasso and I - the embrace," is the name of this picture from 1948. Here the two are still a happy couple. They never married. Claude, their son and first child together, was born earlier that year, followed a year later by their daughter, Paloma. Françoise reveals she never wanted children, but Picasso persuaded her. Her art, however, she would never give up for Picasso. A confident painter Picasso was her great love, her passion. However, there were limits as to what Gilot was willing to accept. Her proud attitude is clearly visible in this photograph of her at work.

"Ne me touchez pas" (Don't Touch Me) is the name of this work by Gilot. It was her philosophy for life - as a child she would never let anyone get too close to her. First oil painting at 17 "Even Picasso never knew me, despite our 10 years together, because I locked myself up. I never reveal, why should I?" These are her words to Herwig, "in the friendliest of tones, until her resounding laughter broke through the ice." The image shows her at the age of 15 - her first oil painting came two years later. 'No woman leaves a man like me' "That is what Pablo explained to her a few weeks before and fixed her with his dark-but-shining reptilian eyes. A man so rich and famous as he was, the most famous painter in the world, a king of the art world. Yes, some kind of God." Herwig begins his book about Gilot with such playful irony from the perspective of the great master himself - "and she laughed uproariously." The naïve genius "Leave him? There was nothing to laugh about.

He was dead serious." The book manages to offer a completely new perspective of the great Picasso, revealing his failings and thus rendering him more human. Again, there's the warm, endearing gaze of Gilot. "Françoise smiled. That a genius could utter such naïve stuff." Picasso without Gilot Gilot left Picasso in 1953. Shortly after, he painted "Bust of a Woman," which is currently on show at the exhibition "The Century Mark: Tel Aviv Museum of Art Visits Berlin" in the Martin Gropius Bau. The separation also marks a break in the book. Gilot is presented as a 93-year-old woman, full of wisdom. Picasso and the women Gilot is the only woman to have ever successfully left the artist. And survived him. Picasso's last wife, Jacqueline Roque, committed suicide, and Marie-Thérèse Walter hanged herself. The ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova remained married to him until her death in 1955, and the photographer Dora Maar (pictured here, in a painting by Picasso), who had given up her passion for him, went mad.

Regret is a waste of time Gilot is radiant with life, even at 93 years of age. "I knew it would be a disaster, but a disaster that would be worth it," she told Herwig. Regret is a pure waste of time. "It's much more interesting to experience something tragic with a unique man than to lead a wonderful life with a mediocre person." Don't be boring! "If you really want to live, you need to risk something dramatic - otherwise it's not worthwhile," Gilot says. "Above all, you will not be boring. This is the worst thing: being boring." Malte Herwig's book "The Woman Who Says No" is currently only available in German, as "Die Frau, die Nein sagt." Author: Sarah Judith Hofmann / jgt More in the Media Center Picasso & Françoise Gilot: 'mano a mano' | Sotheby's Picasso & Françoise Gilot: 'mano a mano' by Siân Folley | 01 May 2015 Françoise Gilot is widely known as the only woman who dared love Picasso and leave him.

"You imagine people will be interested in you?" he was said to have declared as they separated. "They won't ever, really, just for yourself. Even if you think people like you, it will only be a kind of curiosity they will have about a person whose life has touched mine so intimately." Over the last few decades, however, several important exhibitions of Gilot’s work have sought to readdress the balance and have successfully ensured that she receives recognition as a talented artist in her own right. Gilot has always been much more than merely Picasso’s muse and companion; when she famously first met him at Le Catalan restaurant in 1943, at the age of 21 (and forty years his junior), she was already an ambitious and exhibiting painter. Her extensive accomplishments as a painter, printmaker and writer have since seen her inducted into the French Légion d'honneur—in 1991, then one of only a handful of women to be so honored—and exhibited worldwide, culminating in a blockbuster show at Gagosian Gallery in 2012.

This highly anticipated exhibition, Picasso and Françoise Gilot, Paris-Vallauris, 1943-1953, focused on the aesthetic dialogue the two artists shared during the decade they spent together, and it was co-curated by Gilot herself. GILOT AND PICASSO, VALLAURIS, 1952. Reflecting on her relationship with Picasso at this time, Gilot described their decade together as a passionate mano a mano: “In Spain, mano a mano refers to a bullfight where, instead of watching three toreros alternating to kill six bulls in the arena, the public watches two matadors, each of whom takes turns fighting and killing a total of six or eight bulls in one afternoon. In mano a mano two artists work side by side, sharing the same challenge, the same ideal, as, for example, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque did during Cubism. The term also emphasizes the hand, and the strange fraternity that must exist between artistic partners in which emulation must never degenerate into rivalry. Thus it seems an apt metaphor for what happened between Picasso and myself. […] After Pablo and I separated, even though new loves entered our lives, a sense of loss remained.

It was the end of a great passion,” (Françoise Gilot, ‘Françoise Gilot and Pablo Picasso mano a mano’ in Picasso and Françoise Gilot, Paris-Vallauris, 1943-1953 (exhibition catalogue), Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2012, p. 307). Sotheby’s forthcoming Impressionist & Modern Art Evening & Day sales at Sotheby’s New York on May 5th & 6th will see a wonderful selection of paintings and sculpture that reflect the richness of the work inspired by the couple’s mano a mano, including the mesmerizing Femme au chignon dans un fauteuil , Picasso’s Le Hibou noir and Gilot’s The Guardian . PICASSO AND GILOT, LA GALLOISE, VALLAURIS. PABLO PICASSO, FEMME AU CHIGNON DANS UN FAUTEUIL, 1948, OIL ON CANVAS.

TO BE OFFERED IN THE IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART EVENING SALE ON MAY 5TH 2015, ESTIMATE: $12,000,000-18,000,000. PICASSO, FRANÇOISE GILOT, YVES MONTAND AND HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT AT THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL, 1953. GILOT IS WEARING THE POLISH COAT GIVEN TO HER BY PICASSO. Femme au chignon dans un fauteuil, Picasso’s richly colored depiction of his Françoise, dates from the fall of 1948, not long after Picasso returned from a conference of the Communist Party in Warsaw. At the time, Françoise was pregnant with the couple’s child, and she was furious that Picasso had left her alone for several weeks. As a gift of appeasement, he returned from Poland with an embroidered red peasant jacket, which Françoise wore on occasion and is depicted wearing in the present portrait.

This brightly colored article would feature in several portraits of Francoise during these months, perhaps inspired by Picasso’s rival Matisse’s successful series of the woman in a Romanian blouse that had been exhibited to great acclaim in Paris around this time. Picasso loaned the present work to several important career retrospectives held at museums throughout Europe in the early 1950s. It seems that he only parted with the picture in 1956, when it was sold to the Goldwyn family , presumably by Picasso's dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, at Galerie Louise Leiris . Samuel Goldwyn Sr., who was born in Warsaw, must have been profoundly impressed by the composition’s Polish element and, perhaps, felt a kinship with Picasso through this picture. Indeed, Picasso and Goldwyn were great visionaries of the 20th century, who both created indelible images that have withstood the test of time. PICASSO AND GILOT AT MADOURA POTTERY, VALLAURIS, 1953.

In 1946, whilst he was working in the Antibes Museum ( Palais Grimaldi ), Picasso adopted a small owl with an injured leg that was found hiding in a corner. Gilot described Picasso’s reactions to the owl in her memoirs: “While Pablo was still working at the Musée d'Antibes, Michel Sima had come to us one day with a little owl he had found in a corner of the museum. One of his claws had been injured. We bandaged it, and it gradually healed. We bought a cage for him, and when we returned to Paris, we brought him back with us and put him in the kitchen with the canaries, the pigeons and the turtledoves. He smelled awful and ate nothing but mice. Every time the owl snorted at Picasso, he would shout, Cochon, Merde, and a few other obscenities, just to show that he was even worse mannered than him, but Picasso’s fingers, though small, were tough and the owl didn’t hurt him.

Finally the owl would let him scratch his head and gradually came to perch on his finger instead of biting it, but even so, he still looked very unhappy,” (Françoise Gilot, My Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, pp. 144-45). PABLO PICASSO, LE HIBOU NOIR, 1952, PAINTED AND GLAZED CERAMIC. TO BE OFFERED IN THE IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART EVENING SALE ON MAY 5TH 2015, ESTIMATE: $800,000-1,200,000. Executed in 1952, Picasso’s Le Hibou noir is a magnificent example of the artist’s command over the sculptural medium. The owl was a subject that intensely interested Picasso, and it appeared in a number of his paintings (see Zervos, nos. 400, 401, 403, 404, 475-477, 573-575), and at least two lithographs, as well as a number of ceramics.

The transition to ceramics as a medium for artistic expression both fascinated and provoked Picasso. His son Claude has vivid memories of the firing process at Vallauris: “Experimenting with the mixing of those non-existent colours was an interesting challenge for my father. Working with the primal elements fire and earth must have appealed to him because of the almost magical results. Simple means, terrific effect. How ravishing to see colours sing after infernal fires have given them life. The owls managed a wink now. The bulls seemed ready to bellow. The pigeons, still warm from the electric kiln, sat proudly brooding over their warm eggs. I touched them. They were alive, really. The faces smiled. You could hear the band at the bullfight,” (Claude Picasso in Picasso: Sculptor/Painter (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1994, p. 223). FRANÇOISE GILOT, THE GUARDIAN, 1993, OIL ON CANVAS. TO BE OFFERED IN THE IMPRESSIONIST & MODERN ART DAY SALE ON MAY 6TH 2015, ESTIMATE: $60,000-80,000.

PICASSO WITH AN OWL, PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHEL SIMA. Gilot’s painting The Guardian was painted in 1993, exactly forty years after Françoise Gilot parted from Picasso. The subject of the owl clearly harks back to their time together, but quite apart from its reference to this extraordinary period in Gilot’s life, the present work stands in its own right as an image of great force and compositional clarity. This is a painting by a bold and accomplished colorist, and in this respect, the work arguably owes more to Gilot’s old friend Matisse than to Picasso’s many depictions of the subject. The bright blue background speaks of romance and mystery and is masterfully offset by the accents of complementary yellow and gold pigments, both on the owl and the tree trunk. Gilot’s statements about her earliest experience of color leave us in little doubt about its central role in her oeuvre and help us to better understand the concerns behind her extraordinary artistic vision: “each time we open our eyes, we experience a new birth.

Whenever all the sensations from the external world rush towards us, tones, shapes and textures seem to fight for precedence, but in my earliest childhood remembrances, color always prevails," (Françoise Gilot, in Mel Yaokum, ed., Françoise Gilot, Monograph 1940-2000, Lausanne, 2000, p. 13). PICASSO IN VALLAURIS WITH HIS CERAMICS, 1953, PHOTOGRAPH BY EDWARD QUINN.

Question: With which other painter would you associate painter Francoise Gilot?
Answer: Pablo Picasso