The French painter, for decades best known as one of Picasso’s muses, is finally being celebrated for her own art.
It is not fair to describe Françoise Gilot only as the muse of Pablo Picasso—although that is how she has been pigeonholed for the past 70 years.
Gilot was starting to experience her own success as an artist at the age of 21 when she met Picasso, who was 40 years her senior. The two met in a restaurant in 1943 and started a ten-year-long relationship. From that moment on, Gilot’s artistic career has been overshadowed by her relationship with Picasso, even after she walked away from him in 1953—the only one of the artist’s muses to do so.
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But her first solo show in Hong Kong, which opens on November 26 and coincides with her 100th birthday, may change the conversation. Christie’s x Home Art is bringing to Hong Kong some of Gilot’s most important works, ranging from pieces made in the 1940s to more recent works created over the past few years. “Every single work of mine showcased in this exhibition with Christie’s documents the crystallisation of my lifelong experimentations on figures, objects, relationships, and nature,” says Gilot. “I fondly anticipate sharing my passion and pursuit of art with audiences in Asia this autumn.”
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