Françoise Gilot: Painting

by Françoise Gilot (Artist)

Much, but perhaps never enough, has been said about the disparities between the acceptance and presence of women in the world of Modern art. Facing constant discrimination and centuries-old attitudes that kept them out of the academy and in the home, women artists have only of late begun to receive their due. Despite the odds--her father's opposition, competition from her artist partners, Picasso among them, and the task of raising three children--Francoise Gilot has maintained a continuingly vital presence in the art world for more than 50 years. Her paintings, drawings and graphic works exist as a bridge between the Paris School of the 40s and 50s and the contemporary American art scene, a harmony of the organic and the abstract, intuition and rationality. Her oeuvre is represented here in a selection of 36 large-scale paintings from different periods of works between 1945 and 2002, accompanied by essays, an interview with the artist, and biographic and bibliographic information.

Genres: Art

128 pages, Hardcover

First published March 2, 2004

About the author

Françoise Gilot is a French painter, critic, and author. In 1973 Gilot was appointed as the Art Director of the scholarly journal Virginia Woolf Quarterly. In 1976 she was made a member of the board of the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California. She held summer courses there and took on organizational responsibilities until 1983. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s she designed costumes, stage sets, and masks for productions at the Guggenheim in New York. She was awarded a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, in 1990.

She is also known as the lover and artistic muse of Pablo Picasso from 1943 to 1953; the pair had two children, Claude (1947-2023) and Paloma (1949-). She later married the American vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk.

She passed away June 6, 2023 in Manhattan (New York).