Girl with Crown
Girl with Crown, Serigraph
Francoise Gilot (French, born 1921)
#1979.0004.0006
Although perhaps best known as lover and artistic muse to Pablo Picasso, Francoise Gilot is a celebrated painter in her own right, as well as a critic and bestselling author. Born in France in 1921, Gilot began learning to paint from her mother at age 7, and eventually studied Philosophy at Sorbonne and English at Cambridge. She then moved to Paris to attend law school, but in 1940, due to German suspicion of French law students, she was placed on a list of hostages who were not allowed to leave the city of Paris. Many of her early artistic works were destroyed during World War II. Gilot lived with Picasso for 10 years and had two children with him, and in 1964 she published Life with Picasso, a generally negative account of her famous relationship with the artist. GIlot continued to create art, exhibiting internationally from the 1960s onward. She still maintains studios in Paris and New York, living between the two places and working actively at age ninety-six.
