Françoise Gilot

Françoise Gaime Gilot (26 November 1921 – 6 June 2023) was a French painter. Gilot was an internationally known artist working largely in watercolors and ceramics as well as a bestselling memoirist of the book Life with Picasso. Gilot's artwork is showcased in more than a dozen leading museums including the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

In 2021 her painting Paloma à la Guitare, a 1965 portrait of her daughter, sold for $1.3 million at Sotheby's in London. Gilot first made her mark in the post-war milieu of artists who redefined the European artistic landscape; her career then went on to span an impressive eight decades. Delving into the realms of mythology, symbolism, and the power of memory, Gilot's work explores complex philosophical ideas with spontaneity and freedom.

Gilot is also known for her romantic partnership with Pablo Picasso as well as her later marriage to Jonas Salk, the American researcher who developed the first safe polio vaccine. In an interview questioning how she came to be with two of the most influential men in the world, Gilot responded "Lions mate with lions." Today, the Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania is an international center for the study of Gilot's works.

In addition to her personal archives, the museum houses over 270 works of art by the artist, including the most comprehensive collection of her lithographs and etchings outside the artist's estate. Gilot was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, to Émile Gilot and Madeleine Gilot (née Renoult). Her father was a businessman and agronomist, and her mother was a watercolor artist.

Her father was a strict, well-educated man. Gilot began writing with her left hand as a young child, but at the age of four, her father forced her to write with her right hand. As a result, Gilot became ambidextrous. She decided at the age of 5 to become a painter. The following year, her mother tutored her in art, beginning with watercolors and India ink.

Gilot was then taught by her mother's art teacher, Mademoiselle Meuge, for six years. While training to be a lawyer, Gilot was known to skip her morning law classes to study art with Monsieur Gerber, a retired artist living in Paris. Gilot had her first exhibition of paintings in Paris in 1943. --- Source: Article "Françoise Gilot" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.