Françoise Gilot
Woman with Quill, 1950-1959
Francois Gilot, (1921-) studied English Literature at Cambridge University, and then,
encouraged by …
Claiming, “I must cancel the emptiness of the canvas like an opening gambit in a game of chess,” Françoise Gilot came of age as an artist in the early 1940s, a member of the School of Paris, and has been pursuing a bold, Modernist vision in her paintings and prints ever since. She is perhaps best known for her decade-long relationship with Pablo Picasso, which began in 1946 and positioned her at the heart of the Modernist movement, within which she developed a vibrant career. Ranging from representational and narrative to entirely abstract, her compositions evince influences from Cubism and Fauvism. Gilot focuses equally on the structure of her compositions and the visual and emotional resonance of color as she does on the subjects animating them, including her family and memories, mythology, and the forces of nature, time, and space.
Francois Gilot, (1921-) studied English Literature at Cambridge University, and then,
encouraged by her father, studied international law, though she
secretly also took art lessons at the same time. In 1943, during her
first exhibition in Paris, Gilot (then 21) met Pablo Picasso (who was
61) for the first time. In 1946, …
Claiming, “I must cancel the emptiness of the canvas like an opening gambit in a game of chess,” Françoise Gilot came of age as an artist in the early 1940s, a member of the School of Paris, and has been pursuing a bold, Modernist vision in her paintings and prints ever since. She is perhaps best known for her decade-long relationship with Pablo Picasso, which began in 1946 and positioned her at the heart of the Modernist movement, within which she developed a vibrant career. Ranging from representational and narrative to entirely abstract, her compositions evince influences from Cubism and Fauvism. Gilot focuses equally on the structure of her compositions and the visual and emotional resonance of color as she does on the subjects animating them, including her family and memories, mythology, and the forces of nature, time, and space.
