'Life With Picasso' Stands As An Invaluable Work Of Art History
Newly reissued, the intellectual heft of Françoise Gilot's now classic memoir is in its art criticism, even as its emotional arc lies in Picasso and Gilot's unequal romance.
When the French painter and writer Françoise Gilot was 21, she met an older artist at a Paris restaurant. He invited her to visit his studio, and they quickly fell in love.
She defied her bourgeois family by moving in with him, and they remained together for 10 years. They raised two children, and she slowed her own career to be his muse, manager and support system. But this became untenable, and she left him, becoming a highly successful painter in her own right. As for the older artist — well, he was
