Françoise Gilot

Françoise Gaime Gilot (26 November 1921 – 6 June 2023) was a French painter. Gilot was an internationally known artist working largely in watercolors and ceramics as well as a bestselling memoirist of the book Life with Picasso.

Gilot's artwork is showcased in more than a dozen leading museums including the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 2021 her painting Paloma à la Guitare, a 1965 portrait of her daughter, sold for $1.3 million at Sotheby's in London.

Gilot first made her mark in the post-war milieu of artists who redefined the European artistic landscape; her career then went on to span an impressive eight decades. Delving into the realms of mythology, symbolism, and the power of memory, Gilot's work explores complex philosophical ideas with spontaneity and freedom.

Gilot is also known for her romantic partnership with Pablo Picasso as well as her later marriage to Jonas Salk, the American researcher who developed the first safe polio vaccine.

In an interview questioning how she came to be with two of the most influential men in the world, Gilot responded "Lions mate with lions."