Life With Picasso

Françoise Gilot's candid memoir remains the most revealing portrait of Picasso written, and gives fascinating insight into the intense and creative life shared by two modern artists. Françoise Gilot was in her early twenties when she met the sixty-one-year-old Pablo Picasso in 1943. Brought up in a well-to-do upper-middle-class family, who had sent her to Cambridge and the Sorbonne and hoped that she would go into law, the young woman defied their wishes and set her sights on being an artist. Her introduction to Picasso led to a friendship, a love affair, and a relationship of ten years, during which Gilot gave birth to Picasso’s two children, Paloma and Claude. Gilot was one of Picasso’s muses; she was also very much her own woman, determined to make herself into the remarkable painter she did indeed become. Life with Picasso, written with Carlton Lake and published in 1961, is about Picasso the artist and Picasso the man. We hear him talking about painting and sculpture, his life, his career, as well as other artists, both contemporaries and old masters. We glimpse Picasso in his many and volatile moods, dismissing his work, exultant over his work, entertaining his various superstitions, being an anxious father. But Life with Picasso is not only a portrait of a great artist at the height of his fame; it is also a picture of a talented young woman of exacting intelligence at the outset of her own notable career.

Pablo Picasso called Françoise Gilot “The Woman Who Says No.” Tiny, talented, and feisty, and an accomplished artist in her own right, Gilot left Picasso after a ten-year relationship, the only woman to escape his intense attentions unscathed. From 2012 to 2014, German journalist and author Malte Herwig dropped by her ateliers in Paris and New York to chat with her about life, love, and art. She shared trenchant observations, her sharp sense of humor, and over ninety years of experience, much of it in the company of men who changed the world: Picasso, Matisse, and her second husband, the famous virologist Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine. Never one to stand in the shadows, Gilot engaged with ground-breaking artists and scientists on her own terms, creating from these vital interactions an artistic style all her own, translated into an enormous collection of paintings and drawings held by private collectors and public museums around the world. In her early nineties, she generously shared her hospitality and wisdom with Herwig, who started out as an interviewer but found himself drawn into the role of pupil as Gilot, whom he called “a philosopher of joy,” shared with him different ways of seeing the world.

From the foremost Picasso scholar, the first volume of his Life of Picasso draws on Richardson's close friendship with Picasso, his own diaries, the collaboration of Picasso's widow Jacqueline, and unprecedented access to Picasso's studio and papers to arrive at a profound understanding of the artist and his work. Combining meticulous scholarship with irresistible narrative appeal, this definitive biography of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century details the years 1881-1906, from Picasso's beginnings in Spain to age twenty-five in Paris. With more than 800 extraordinary black-and-white illustrations.

Merging biography, memoir, and cultural history, this compelling book, a bestseller in France, traces the life of Dora Maar (1907–1997) through a serendipitous encounter with the artist’s address book. In search of a replacement for his lost Hermès agenda, Brigitte Benkemoun’s husband buys a vintage diary on eBay. When it arrives, she opens it and finds inside private notes dating back to 1951—twenty pages of phone numbers and addresses for Balthus, Brassaï, André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Paul Éluard, Leonor Fini, Jacqueline Lamba, and other artistic luminaries of the European avant-garde. After realizing that the address book belonged to Dora Maar—Picasso’s famous “Weeping Woman” and a brilliant artist in her own right—Benkemoun embarks on a two-year voyage of discovery to learn more about this provocative, passionate, and enigmatic woman, and the role that each of these figures played in her life. Longlisted for the prestigious literary award Prix Renaudot, Finding Dora Maar is a fascinating and breathtaking portrait of the artist. “Beautifully written and fascinating.”—Paris Match “One of the happy surprises of the end of the literary season.”—Livres Hebdo “A highly moving portrait of the artist.”—Elle (France) This book received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States through their publishing assistance program.

A long-time companion of Picasso describes the artistic and personal friendship between two giants of twentieth-century art, capturing the affection, rivalry, and creative interaction of the two geniuses, along with examples of their works

This publication explores Picasso’s portrayals of life with Gilot and their young family in the decade they spent together. Françoise Gilot was a young budding painter when she met Picasso by chance at a café in 1943. The subsequent ten years spent together was a time of transformation in Picasso’s paintings that coincided with revolutionary inventions in lithography, sculpture, and ceramics. Picasso: L’Epoque Françoise presents for the first time several of Gilot’s paintings and drawings from the period alongside Picasso’s when the young painter was maturing while the elder continued to change the face of modern art. The fully illustrated catalogue includes a historic dialogue between Richardson and Gilot celebrating Picasso’s innovation in every medium during the postwar years of renewal.

Modern art has a language, and when it is learned it opens the door to a lifetime of enjoyment and appreciation. In Picasso: Soul on Fire, Rick Jacobson and Laura Fernandez present more than the story of the painter’s life. By exploring his influences and his creative process, they give young readers the tools with which to understand his work. Picasso was certainly an expert draftsman – his rendering of pigeons’ feet by the time he was eleven was so detailed that his artist father recognized the boy’s genius and stopped painting. But he is remembered for taking art in directions that have made us redefine how we see the world. This beautifully illustrated homage is not only an introduction to one of the most important artists of the last century, but a splendid introduction to modern art.

From 1950 to 1962, John Richardson lived near Picasso in France and was a friend of the artist. With a view to writing a biography, the acclaimed art historian kept a diary of their meetings. After Picasso's death, his widow Jacqueline collaborated in the preparation of this work, giving Richardson access to Picasso's studio and papers. Volume one of this extraordinary biography establishes the complexity of Picasso's Spanish roots; his aversion to his native Malaga and his passion for Barcelona and Catalan "modernisme". Richardson introduces new material on the artist's early training in religious art; re-examines old legends to provide fresh insights into the artistic failures of Picasso's father as an impetus to his sons's triumphs; and includes portraits of Apollinaire, Max Jacob and Gertrude Stein, who made up "The Picasso Gang" in Paris during the "Blue" and "Rose" periods.