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Françoise Gilot: The Artist Who Said No to Picasso and Claimed Her Own Legacy
- Ankita
- Aug 8
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 9
Acclaimed French painter Françoise Gilot once said that associating her with her decade-long relationship with Picasso is a disservice to her identity as an artist. In contemporary culture, Gilot was what many would call a feminist, and it is not just because she dared to be the first woman to walk out on the acclaimed Spanish painter Pablo Picasso.
She also defied her father's wishes and chose a career path that required immense resilience and perseverance in a time when women were expected to be subservient and compliant. Whenever a door closed for her, she shoved open another one instead of waiting for it to happen on its own.
Pablo Picasso may be one of the most pivotal cultural figures, thanks to his artistic contributions. At the same time, he became infamous for controlling and abusing women much junior to him for years in the name of romance before casting them aside for yet another one.
Such was also the case when it came to Françoise Gilot, whom Picasso met while he was still dating surrealist artist and photographer Dora Maar. Despite being strongly opinionated and established, Maar became another of his victims. Gilot’s courage broke the cycle for once and for all.
Françoise Gilot Was Always a Revolutionary
Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France in 1921, Françoise Gilot was the only daughter of Émile and Madeleine Gilot. Her father was a wealthy industrialist and agronomist. On the other hand, her mother was a talented artist who had mastered watercolor techniques and a ceramicist, with great knowledge of art history. Émile Gilot wanted a son, so he raised his daughter like one by teaching her horseback riding and rock climbing. The result? Gilot became a tomboy who did not need anyone’s approval for what she wanted to do.
When a young Gilot expressed an interest in art, her mother encouraged her to learn painting and pursue it as a profession, although Émile Gilot was against it. He wanted his only daughter to become a physician, but she refused to comply. When her father refused to let her study philosophy, she began studying law.
Gilot studied art with Monsieur Gerber while she was studying law. After the Germans invaded Paris, things went downhill, and she had to drop out of law school. Part of the reason behind this decision was safety, because Germans were not keen about the French people studying law. This allowed her to pursue her dreams of becoming a professional artist. She notably held a degree in English from the University of Cambridge as well as a degree in Philosophy from the University of Paris. A big turning point in her life came when she met Pablo Picasso.
Inside Françoise Gilot’s Decade with Picasso
In 1943, a 21-year-old Françoise Gilot was having dinner with her school friend and fellow artist Geneviève Aliquot and the actor Alain Cuny at a restaurant named La Catalan, when 61-year-old Pablo Picasso brought a bowl of cherries to their table. At the time, the Spanish painter was still in a relationship with Dora Maar, who was infuriated by this move.
In an interview with ‘The Guardian’ in June 2016, she admitted that one of the reasons she ended up in an affair with Picasso was that most men her age were at war. She elaborated:
“Because I would have thought he’s very old, I’m very young. The men who could’ve been interested in me, and me in them, just disappeared. It was not a time like any other. It was a time when everything was lost; a time of death. So: do I want to do something before I die, or not? You have to seize it. It was – let’s do something right away!”
Was she not aware of the abuse Picasso had subjected his previous lovers to? She was. In her 1964 book ‘Life with Picasso’, she wrote that a relationship with Picasso was a “catastrophe I didn't want to avoid.” Although the couple was together for a decade and had two children, they never got married because Picasso’s first wife, Olga Khokhlova, refused to give him a divorce. In fact, Khokhlova tagged along with them on their holidays.
Picasso tried to control his new lover, just as he had with his previous partners, but Gilot was not like them. So, she became “the woman who says no”. In her book ‘Life with Picasso’, she recounted how he threatened to burn her once in the midst of an argument. She wrote:
“He took the cigarette he was smoking and touched it to my right cheek and held it there. He must have expected me to pull away, but I was determined not to give him the satisfaction.”
Françoise Gilot Outgrew Picasso’s Shadow
Françoise Gilot contemplated separation from Picasso for two years before walking out on him in 1953, a move that shook the art world. As she recounted in her book, Picasso said:
“You imagine people will be interested in you? They won’t ever, really, just for yourself … It will only be a kind of curiosity they will have about a person whose life touched mine so intimately.”
Picasso stayed in touch with Gilot and their two children, Claude and Paloma, initially. After their separation, he rallied for her to be shunned from the artistic and intellectual circles of Paris. When he learned that she was immortalizing her time with him in a book titled ‘Life with Picasso’, his fury knew no bounds. He sued her in a desperate attempt to stop the book’s publication in France. It was as if he had learned nothing about Gilot in the years that they spent together—she was unstoppable.
Written by Gilot and the art critic Carlton Lake, ‘Life with Picasso’ was published in 1964, eleven years after her romance with Picasso ended. It sold over a million copies and was translated into numerous languages. Gilot used all the proceeds to aid her children in their legal battle to be recognized as Picasso’s heirs.
This is not to say that there were no consequences. Gilot became the common enemy of the entirety of France after the book was published. So, she had to move to New York. She married twice after she broke up with Picasso. She tied the knot with artist Luc Simon in 1955 and remained with him for seven years. In 1970, she exchanged vows with American polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk. She was married to Salk until his demise in 1995.
Françoise Gilot Established Her Legacy as a Painter
Françoise Gilot’s mother began teaching her painting when she was six. She also learned ceramics and studied with Mlle. Meuge and the Post-Impressionist painter Jacques Beurdeley. Her first major art exhibition in Paris was in 1943. Though she was influenced by Picasso art, it did not lead her to lose her individual artistic style.
Rooted in lyrical abstraction, her work is characterized by bold colors, semi-abstract forms, and introspective themes. Her compositions spoke of strength, memory, and personal mythology. In later years, she explored themes of family, mythology, and mortality—rendered in a style that was entirely her own.
One of her most renowned bodies of work is the ‘Labyrinth Series’, created between 1961 and 1963. Over time, her reputation as a painter steadily grew. In 2021, her 1965 portrait ‘Paloma à la Guitare’, depicting her daughter, sold for $1.3 million at Sotheby’s London—more than seven times its estimated high value. Her painting ‘Living Forest’ was also sold for $1.3 million at Christie’s in Hong Kong.
Further, her works have been exhibited in the leading museums in New York—the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, as well as the Centre Pompidou in France. After her passing at the age of 101, some of her paintings were also exhibited in the Picasso Museum in Paris. This was not just a homage to her legacy, but also a strong reminder of Picasso’s dark side.
