Franoise Gilot

Vocation

Notable

Family

French artist and writer of a candid, humorous and intelligent memoir, "Life with Picasso," with Carlton Lake, McGraw-Hill Publishers, 1964. An only child, she had a cold father who beat her in fury when she dropped out of the Sorbonne to be an artist. She painted from the time she was 17 and was an insomniac and voracious reader. She met Pablo Picasso May 1943 when she was 21 and he was 63. As she had recently left both school and her childhood home, she was living with her grandmother. She and Picasso developed an easy, close camaraderie, involved in the same social group of artists and intellectuals. They became lovers Feb. 1994 and she moved in with him soon after. Gilot shared Picasso's life for nearly a decade, giving her life to him, taking care of his needs and putting up with his moods, modeling for him as she painted steadily herself. Their son Claude was born 5/15/1947 and daughter Paloma 4/19/1949 "toward eight that evening." Picasso chafed under the domesticity, had affairs with other women and they began to pull apart. Following a period of calm through 1952, Gilot took the kids and left him 9/30/1953. She had known Luc Sima from the time of teens and re-met him in Paris in 1954. They married July 1955 and had a daughter, Aurelia. She never saw Picasso again. Link to Wikipedia biography