I n 2022, aged 100, the artist Françoise Gilot told the New York Times: ‘I see life as a labyrinth. You don’t fight it. You go where it takes you. You go the other way.’

Gilot, who has died in New York aged 101, was speaking from a position of experience and wisdom. Over the course of her long and accomplished career, she navigated those labyrinthine angles and edges of life with determination and character.

‘The entire Sotheby’s community is saddened at the passing of Françoise Gilot,’ said Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, Oliver Barker. ‘An exceptional painter, printmaker and memoirist, she blazed a trail in an era when partners of great artists were expected to be subsumed into the role of passive muse. Gilot’s determination to maintain her sense of self and creative agency stands as an inspiration and testament to her innate self-belief as an artist of substance.’

‘She was a brilliant artist, author and a true genius. A stunning person with great style. She once said to me that she will only stop painting when she stops breathing.’
- Benjamin Doller, Chairman Sotheby's Americas

‘She was a brilliant artist, author and a true genius,’ commented Chairman of Sotheby’s America, Benjamin Doller. ‘A stunning person with great style. She once said to me that she will only stop painting when she stops breathing.’

Gilot was already an accomplished painter when she met Picasso in 1943, at Le Catalan restaurant in Paris. Born in 1921, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, she had gravitated towards art from an early age to the dismay of her middle-class parents. When they met, Picasso was in the final stages of his relationship with Dora Maar and was immediately drawn to Gilot’s confidence, talent and charisma. He invited her to visit his studio where the inevitable pass was made. Despite Gilot’s initial misgivings, the pair embarked on a relationship that would last a decade, produce two children, spur each other on to reach new heights in their respective artistry and ultimately end with Gilot walking out, refusing to put up with Picasso’s intransigent infidelity and possessiveness. Francoise Gilot, 1953 the year she met Pablo Picasso. (AFP via Getty Images)

Yet despite the tensions, their relationship was, at its height, a meeting of minds. Gilot herself later described their time living and working together, in their South of France home, as working ‘mano a mano’: when ‘two artists work side by side, sharing the same challenge, the same ideal, as, for example, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque did during Cubism. The term also emphasises the hand, and the strange fraternity that must exist between artistic partners in which emulation must never degenerate into rivalry. Thus, it seems an apt metaphor for what happened between Picasso and myself.’
Artist Françoise Gilot

And over the course of their relationship, Picasso would enjoy a vigorous resurgence in his own work, prompting his friend and biographer John Richardson to later observe that Picasso ‘took more from her than she took from him’. She in turn reflected that Picasso treated women like ‘goddesses and doormats.’

In their final months together, Picasso grew increasingly possessive of Gilot, whilst stubbornly refusing to give up his infidelities, a paradox found in works such as Femme assise en costume vert. By the time this painting was executed, Gilot had irrevocably decided to leave. In response to this, Picasso painted numerous portraits of her, many of which show Gilot either seated in an armchair or involved in domestic activity; as though Picasso felt in painting her that he could keep her as a presence in his life. Only a few months after Femme assise en costume vert was painted, Gilot would leave Picasso to begin a new life of her own in Paris, with their two children Claude and Paloma.

A decade after their split, in 1964, Gilot dissected their relationship in her memoir Life with Picasso. Writing in an unsentimental, even-handed fashion, Gilot praised her former partner’s passion, innate genius and capacity for fatherliness – while frankly revealing the euphoric highs and dank lows – and caused a sensation in France. It sold over one million copies in its first year.

The memoir outraged Picasso’s loyal allies and fans but served as an inspiration for younger generations. A 2019 reissue was hailed in the New Yorker as a ‘proto-feminist classic’, serving as the inspiration for the film Surviving Picasso. Pablo Picasso and Francoise Gilot, Vallauris, France, circa 1952.

'Françoise said a dialogue is not a monologue, and with her, Picasso had a type of dialogue.’

- Sotheby's Europe Deputy Chairman, Michael Sandhofer-Berger

‘On the whole, she felt he gave her more positives than negatives,’ said Sotheby’s Europe Deputy Chairman Michael Sandhofer-Berger. ‘And Françoise gave him a very positive time overall. She said a dialogue is not a monologue, and with her, Picasso had a type of dialogue.’

In the immediate aftermath of their split, Picasso peevishly attempted to prevent galleries showing her paintings. Following the publication of Life With Picasso in 1964, he cut off all contact with Gilot and their children. Today, her works are in collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 1991, after decades of painting, drawing, poetry, writing and lecturing, Gilot was inducted into the French Légion d'Honneur – at that time, one of only a handful of women to be admitted.