On the eve of her 100th birthday, Paloma and Claude Picasso’s mother has never been more in view. The musée Estrine in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence is hosting a retrospective of her work, which is little known in France. We look back at a life that broke the mold.
It was not easy being a painter and the wife of the 20th-century’s most famous artist. But long before #metoo came along, Françoise Gilot turned her back on Picasso, her status as muse, and France, which she left to exhibit in the United States. In this previously unpublished 2009 interview in her Paris studio, she looked back at her struggle to become an accomplished artist.
Did you become an artist before or after meeting Picasso? I met Picasso when I was 17. I had started oil painting and met Endre Rozsda, a Hungarian painter with whom I had a long artistic relationship. I existed before and after Picasso, but I repudiate nothing in this period of my life.
Post-Impressionist painter Émile Mairet was close to your family. How important was he to you? He was a friend of my grandmother’s. As a child, his silhouette dressed all in black made an impression on me. When I found out he was an artist, I thought these beings were more interesting than everybody else. At 11, I fell in love with one…
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