For decades Picasso had been playing rabbit with his lovers, hopping from one to another. Married twice. He fathered 4 different children with 3 women. Only one was, as it was called then in Spain, legitimate, that was Paulo with his first wife Olga Khoklova.
With Francoise Gilot he fathered 2, Paloma and Claude. Francoise hits the historical map by being the only woman to leave Picasso. Bravo. How dare she. Picasso was outraged and said she will never make it alone. Guess what Pablo, she did. Not only was she a successful painter but also as an author, most famously for her nasty tome called Life With Picasso, ( co-written and published by Carlton Lake). Pablo was not pleased. The book was also made into a movie. There have been 3 other books to her credit.
Now her work; she was an artist to whom I owe a great debt to, as her work like mine was in perpetual flux. Her genre was for the most part was abstract and portraits of Paloma. Those portraits are full of love, her affection is clear. I can say the same of much of her abstraction. Her love of creating them. Their love, like her are full of self confidence, she did not suffer fools, neither does her work. I saw her work at MOMA in New York, and they are not to be easily dismissed with a terse glance.
Her choices of colours no matter the subject matter was bold. A lot of her abstracts are placed on a field of a striking red or blue. In the years shortly after leaving the minotaur she became an abstract expressionist without actually being counted among them. She has described her work as part memory and dreams. She mixed them together to create compositions that my eye has a hard time leaving, especially her abstracts that have a geometric representation. It’s an avenue I have used in my own work.
In researching her work it’s sad that the writers spend most of their content on her relationship with Picasso, as I just did. However, I did manage to find a short but deeply informative interview on YouTube at age 99. She was lucid and to the point. She was solid in her statement of change that we are not the same tomorrow as we are today, so why should she express herself as anyone but herself. She had no outside influence, nor did she care about the opinion of others, and her work is a strong reflection of that state of being.
Francoise Gilot, passed away on June 6th 2023 at the young age of 101. She was working until her mid 90’s.
Living Forest