Francoise Gilot: Monograph 1940-2000

by Françoise Gilot

Gilot is an internationally regarded artist whose paintings, drawings, monotypes, and other works are included in the permanent collections of several European and U.S. museums. Influenced by Picasso and Matisse, these works make their primary statement through the use of color. Picasso was impressed enough by her first exhibition and its anti-Nazi sentiments to initiate their ten-year love affair, and Gilot served him as both model and muse, inspiring many of his paintings while mothering two of their children. This thematically arranged retrospective of Gilot's oeuvre is particularly noteworthy for its generous color illustrations and insightful accompanying text. A 92-page biography, written by Yoakum, curator of the artist's archives, concludes the book. Including both early works from her School of Paris years and more recent works, this definitive volume replaces the exhibition catalogs published in the last two decades. A rich, delightful addition to any 20th-century art collect

444 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2001

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).