Françoise Gilot, French painter and writer, died on Tuesday at the age of 101. The woman who was Pablo Picasso's companion for ten years was the mother of his children Claude and Paloma. His work is exhibited at MoMA, Metropolitan and Pompidou, among other major museums. However, his relationship with the painter from Malaga pursued him throughout his professional life.
She was the daughter of a businessman and a watercolorist. He studied philosophy and English literature at the University of Cambridge, but left everything to devote his life to painting. Author of a book entitled Life with Picasso, published in 1964, Gilot was not only one of the few women who left the Spanish painter by her will, but also rebuilt her sentimental and artistic life and had a remarkable career in the United States as a painter and writer after their separation.
Gilot met Picasso in 1943, when she was 21 and he was 61 and the two were coupled. They never married, but maintained a relationship for ten years. When he left the painter, he snapped: "Do you think anyone is going to be interested in you? They'll never do it just for you: even the people you think appreciate you, it'll just be a kind of curiosity for a person whose life touched mine so intimately," he told her.
Picasso loved to match his lovers with Gilot to provoke jealousy: this caused them to end up fighting physically. Picasso declared years later that this moment was one of his "most precious" memories.
Gilot's book was a bestseller and despite its mostly kind tone with his ex-lover – he even dedicated it "to Pablo" – it infuriated Picasso, who withdrew the word, as well as the two common children. And although the book and her status as an ex-lover of the genius was what gave her the most fame, her career as a painter was successful. In 2021, a work of his titled Paloma con una guitarra sold for $1.3 million at auction at Sotheby's.
Gilot suffered from lung and heart problems, his daughter Aurelia explained today.