Françoise Gilot, indomitable painter, mother of Picasso's children

Start at the end, this day of August 1, 1954, which says all the panache of the artist Françoise Gilot, Picasso's "flower woman". In the arenas of Vallauris, in the south of France where the couple had settled eight years earlier, haughty on their horse, braided hair under their Andalusian hat, immaculate blouse, waist strapped by a large belt, the distinguished rider chosen to open the bullfight. The one who shared Picasso's life for more than ten years, the mother of his children, Claude and Paloma, was then 32 years old, and held the reins of her destiny in her hands. As she always has. And, while Picasso still thinks he can win back the woman who ten months earlier had left their house in Vallauris for Paris with her children, Françoise Gilot, that day, orchestrates a final lap, a triumphant and public farewell to the painter. A day that sums up this free and rebellious woman who has just celebrated her 100th birthday in the United States where she has lived since the 1970s, and who, beyond her paintings exhibited by the most prestigious American museums, has also recorded in history as the only one of Picasso's wives to have left the master. In fact, however much she loved and admired him madly, she got tired of his autocratic, dictator and suffocating character, of this courtship around him which ends up prohibiting all intimacy, of his pranks while he continues to assure him of his deepest love. Not fooled by this scenario that the painter reiterates with each new conquest and that she thus evokes in the fascinating documentary (1) dedicated to her. “Act 1, you were a goddess; act 2, it was already starting to turn a little less round; act 3, you became a monster and he did whatever it took to get you out of there. Then she added in passing: "Don't forget that I was Bluebeard's seventh wife and that the others were all already hanged in the antechamber." Olga, Marie-Thérèse, Dora Maar, and soon after her Jacqueline Roque, all of them falling into madness, or taking their own lives. So yes, she knew she wouldn't go back, that her life was now elsewhere. “She left her life with ceremony as she had entered it ten years earlier,” says Annie Maïllis, author of a long truthful interview with the painter (2). The meeting with Pablo took place one evening in 1943. Picasso was 61, and Françoise Gilot, just 21. That evening, she dined at the Catalan with her best friend, Geneviève, a painter like her, and the actor Alain Cunny. Picasso, surrounded by a group of friends, including Dora Maar, with whom the story takes on the appearance of a bloody bullfight, quickly joins the actor to inquire about his lovely company. He suggests that the two young women come and see him at his studio in the rue des Grands-Augustins one morning. The moment when the Spaniard receives friends and acquaintances who have come to discover his latest paintings. She went there, once, twice, then others, fascinated by the painter, also an admirer of the fact that the author of "Guernica", a symbol of resistance against fascism, chose to stay in Paris rather than to go into exile in the United States. He has already fallen in love with this determined young woman from a good family, this seasoned rider – he is so afraid of horses –, with her distant beauty and her face with high cheekbones lit by her water-green eyes. A few months after their meeting, Picasso invites her to come and see him for an afternoon. She dresses that day in a fairly low-cut black velvet dress with a white lace collar. “My attitude meant: I am aware, you are not seducing me, it was I who decided to come today like that; yes, indeed, I agree, that's it! " She adds: "He was a little flabbergasted because he thought he was seducing a young girl with a little of the lying that entails. But, for Françoise Gilot, life is played with eyes open, without deception. That day, she also knows that she chooses Picasso against the advice of her parents, of her adored grandmother, that she is cutting ties with those close to her.

“Picasso was despicable with my children”

“His life was structured on ruptures, explains his friend Annie Maïllis. When we try to assign her a position that does not suit her, she does not hesitate to break up. She doesn't do it out of a spirit of opposition, but because she knows what she wants. Thus, when she turns to painting against the advice of her father who wants her to be a lawyer, the rupture will be irreversible, but she sticks to her decision. Later, when Nicolas de Staël – whom she joined in the Réalités nouvelles group – reproached her for frequenting Picasso too much and for continuing her figurative drawings, she turned on her heels.

No doubt, Françoise Gilot charts her course as she sees fit. Her daughter, Paloma Ruiz-Picasso, testifies to this mother, a feminist before her time: "When, barely a teenager, I witnessed the emergence of the Women's Liberation movements, I did not understand what they wanted, since it was already like that at home! My mother always showed me that as a woman you could do exactly what you wanted, and that you didn't have to censor yourself. She was a model for me and she still is,” continues the jewelry designer for Tiffany & Co. And she adds “until my adolescence, moreover, she always claimed that she didn't know how to cook, it was her way of saving time for her painting. But to paint more was also to be able to earn money and thus assume the life she had chosen”.

This determination, this only child of a bourgeois family draws it from her childhood, and from this agricultural engineer father who wanted a son and will educate his daughter the hard way, transforming his fearful nature into a strong character, underpinned by an iron requirement. Her strength, Françoise Gilot also and especially draws it from painting. "His life project was not Picasso, it was painting", confirms Annie Maïllis. At the Château de Grimaldi, in Antibes, then at La Galloise, his house on the heights of Vallauris, Pablo and Françoise are at work, each in his studio. Françoise enchants Picasso's creation, she is the multiplied figure of his work "War and Peace", imagined for the chapel of Vallauris, the dancing naiad of "La Joie de vivre"... "For him, she embodies the period of renewal and brighter tomorrows", continues Annie Maïllis. Her paintings reveal a less melodious reality, and say a lot about her moods: "Adam forcing Eve to eat the apple", self-portraits with a face half collapsed when Picasso summons her to choose between her girlfriend, Geneviève, and he, portraits of the painter too, whose features continue to harden. She refuses the role of muse. "She very quickly understood that she could fall for the side of the image, explains Élisa Farran, the director of the Estrine museum, which exhibits her paintings from the French period (3). Also, in order not to let herself be confined only as Picasso's wife, she responds to him in painting. Each time he represents her, she does the same or makes a portrait of her, so as not to let her identity be stolen. In the south of France, life unfolds according to a ritual dictated by the master. In the morning, Françoise works to raise Picasso's morale to the lowest point and who asks himself: “Why live another day when his life is atrocious, and he only has trouble? Then, when the bad mood is over, it's beach time with the kids, painting. A daily life punctuated by the bullfights which will soon be the only happy moments of the couple, and by the permanent passage of friends. The regulars are called Paul Éluard, Jean Cocteau, Tristan Tzara, Louis Aragon, Robert Capa, Michel and Louise Leiris, Pierre Daix and Hélène Parmelin, communist activists. Françoise Gilot comments as follows: “Some were afraid of him, others had something to ask him. No one said no to him, no one opposed him. She does it from the top of her twenties, without batting an eyelid. So much so that the painter calls her “the woman who says no”. “I struggled to keep my own integrity and my own identity. If you put yourself in the classic feminine position, that is to say to be subjugated, seduced, then you went through the mill! You entered nobody, and you came out sausage! And, by then, you wouldn't have interested him at all,” she says in the documentary.

"She always pretended she couldn't cook: her way of saving time"

After their breakup, while the Minotaur found other arms in Vallauris with Jacqueline Roque who will soon watch over him like a wolf, Françoise, in Paris, reconnects with her friends, meets the painter Luc Simon and marries him. Picasso then pulls out his claws and issues an ultimatum to the Louise Leiris gallery with which Françoise signed a contract six years earlier. The message is clear: either they eject Françoise, or he leaves the gallery. The affront was even worse when his daughter Aurélia was born in October 1956. Picasso had warned her with a pithy “we don't leave Picasso”. Meanwhile, at a time when children had no inheritance rights, Françoise began proceedings to obtain Picasso's surname for her children. At 12 and 10 years old, Claude and Paloma Gilot are now called Picasso. “This decision at the time moved the legislation forward,” stresses Annie Maïllis. In the 1960s, Françoise traveled regularly to New York, the new center of painting and the city where her collectors resided. She published there, in 1964, "Living with Picasso" (4), where she dissects the artistic genius of the Spanish painter, his volcanic energy, his playful energy, but also his dark side. A crime of lèse-majesté. “From that moment on, Picasso let the dogs go,” explains Annie Maïllis. He launches a legal action against the French publisher – he will lose it –, and in “Les Lettres françaises”, the newspaper directed by Aragon, a petition of eighty personalities invites to ban the work. Among them, the gallery owner of Picasso, the intellectuals of the Communist Party and those who, until yesterday, were Françoise's friends. Picasso's anger did not spare his children, Claude in particular, whom he considered responsible for not having prevented his mother from publishing the work. The penalty is severe: he will not see them again. “With my children, he was despicable, she says without concession, in the documentary. It helped me to leave France. And to settle permanently in the United States in the early 1970s. There she met the eminent biologist Jonas Salk, pioneer of vaccination against poliomyelitis, soon to be her husband, and devoted herself to his colorful abstractions. Two years ago, Françoise Gilot exhibited them in her New York gallery, acclaimed by the art world, her frail but straight silhouette, her clear eyes, always turned towards painting.