Francoise Gilot, who rose above her boyfriend 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 book in 1964 that chronicled her turbulent relationship with the Spanish contemporary art titan.
She spoke of the “hell” of being Picasso’s mistress and inspiration for his paintings.
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 biography of Pablo Picasso, commended Gilot for “the insights, love, and wisdom you brought into my life.”
Gilot opened her first studio in her grandmother’s flat after being born in the Paris region in 1921 to a merchant father and a watercolor artist mother.
Her father, who didn’t want her to become an artist, insisted that she study law, philosophy, and English. But she continued painting in secret.
She was temporarily detained while residing in occupied Paris during World War Two for taking part in an anti-Nazi rally under the Arc de Triomphe.
She first met the married Picasso, who was 40 years older than her, in a café when she was 21 years old. The two soon had a close personal and professional connection.
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, was married twice, notably to Jonas Salk, the inventor of the US polio vaccine, had another child, and took on the role of chairperson of the fine arts department at the University of Southern California.
Gilot, who was 96 at the time and was an avid traveler and artist, produced a collection of sketches from journeys to India, Senegal, and Venice in 2018.
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