PhillipsX to present Gilot, Une Vie, a selling exhibition of paintings by Françoise Gilot at Phillips’ New York headquarters.
Following her recent death in 2023 at the age of 101, Gilot, Une Vie is the first retrospective of the artist’s work at a major selling venue. The exhibition includes both works for sale and on loan, showcasing a breadth of artistic output dated from 1942 to 2015 – from the early years of the Second World War and her relationship with Pablo Picasso, through motherhood, her emigration to the United States, and eventual marriage to Jonas Salk. While each painting provides an intimate snapshot from her life, together they present a survey of Gilot’s iconographic lexicon and the evolution of her self-fashioning over time as artist, mother, and muse.
In sourcing works for this show, I had the honor of joining what felt like an exclusive group of people who knew, understood, and loved Françoise Gilot. I heard time after time about her brilliance and how strong-willed, dedicated, and fiercely loyal she was.
Gilot was a talented draughtsman and exceptional colourist and deserves to be seen outside the context of which she’s typically positioned. She was not a female artist among strong men but a strong woman who surrounded herself with those equally as great as she was.
Nina Piro, Specialist, Modern & Contemporary Art,
Several of Gilot’s paintings from the 1940s and early 1950s, which are among of her most beloved, will be on view, including portraits of her son Claude Picasso, fellow painter Cécile Miguel, and the rare 1942 landscape, Le Bois d’Isis, completed during the Nazi occupation of France. Rendered in vibrant pinks and greens, the landscape demonstrates Gilot’s early mastery of volumetric forms. Le Bateau (1952), on loan for the exhibition, depicts the artist’s young daughter Paloma Picasso with a sailboat in the background – a symbol that appears frequently in her work.
oil on board 45 5/8 x 35 in. (116 x 89 cm) Painted in 1952. ON LOAN
The exhibition also includes important examples of Gilot’s unique style of abstraction, such as Cosmic Disarray and Erratic Comet, both from 1998. Each is rendered in vibrant blues and reds, where Gilot illustrates a distorted geometric field of color and space. For Gilot, abstraction occurs with the collision of form and color.
Spanning time and geographies, Gilot’s artistic practice continued to evolve, but her iconography remained extremely personal. With the same ingenuity and hospitality she practiced outside the studio, Gilot welcomes the viewer back into her interior world time and again, revisiting the symbols and familiar figures she encountered in her daily life as a woman of many roles – painter, professor, memoirist, social justice advocate, wife, and mother of three. Gilot’s works are held in public institutions, including, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Centre Pompidou, Paris, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Several paintings by Gilot are currently on display at the Musée Picasso, Paris.
Painted in 1985.
Françoise Gilot, Gilot, Une Vie, 4th-22nd November 2024, Phillips 432 Park Avenue, New York, exhibitions.phillips.com/collections/gilot-une-vie
About
Françoise Gilot (November 26th, 1921 – June 6th, 2023) was a French painter known for her watercolors and ceramics, as well as her bestselling memoir Life with Picasso. Her work appears in over a dozen major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2021, her 1965 painting Paloma à la Guitare sold for $1.3 million at Sotheby’s in London.
Gilot emerged in the postwar European art scene, developing a career that spanned eight decades. Her work, rich with mythology, symbolism, and memory, balances complex themes with spontaneity and freedom.
In addition to her art, she is known for her relationships with Pablo Picasso and later Jonas Salk, who developed the first polio vaccine. Asked once how she came to be with two such influential men, she famously replied, “Lions mate with lions.”
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