Paloma a la Guitare, striking in colour and imposing in scale, was executed in 1965 when Françoise Gilot was living in London. Depicting her daughter Paloma, it is a mesmerizingly bold portrait which showcases the artist’s innovative approach to colour and form. Born and raised in Paris, Gilot embarked on an artistic career which was interwoven with the evolution of modern art and a personal life which involved a ten-year relationship with Pablo Picasso. This confident painting is an evocative expression of Gilot’s autonomy which steadily increased after she left Picasso in 1953.
While Gilot’s parents willed her to become a lawyer, her precocious and independent spirit compelled her to pursue a career in art. At the age of nineteen, she cast aside her studies in law, and by twenty-one, was already one of the most respected artists of the emerging School of Paris. Gilot met Picasso in the Spring of 1943, the same year as her first important exhibition in Paris. Despite being forty years her senior, the two began a decade-long relationship, resulting in the births of their two children, Claude and Paloma.
From 1964 to 1968, Gilot resided in an artist studio in Chelsea, organised by the director of the Tate Gallery in London. Paloma, with whom she was very close to, lived in France but visited her often. In 1949, the influential Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler offered Gilot a contract to become her exclusive dealer. In 1952, she received further encouragement when she signed subsidiary contracts with Curt Valentin Gallery in New York and the Leicester Gallery in London. This granted her a measure of independence which prompted an important increase in the scale and ambition of her paintings. She would later describe her representation in London and New York as an enhanced impetus to forge a career distinct from Picasso.
‘I knew Paris was no longer the centre but I hesitated between London and New York. My work was with two galleries in London, which were holding it because in France things had got rather difficult for me—leaving Picasso was seen as a big crime and I was no longer welcome. During the 1960s I had a studio in Sydney Close, Chelsea, given me on the recommendation of the director of the Tate, but I always had more collectors in the US than anywhere else, so it made sense to relocate here for work.’
For Gilot, the act of painting portraits was first and foremost a vehicle for experimentation with colour and mood. Gilot portrays Paloma peacefully playing her guitar, but the atmosphere is intensified by the vibrant hues of blue and angular lines that comprise the composition and her elaborate feathered headpiece which exudes a sense of exoticness. Picasso had introduced Gilot to Henri Matisse early on in their courtship and the two experienced an almost instant complicity. The present work is a homage to the man whom Gilot considered the master of light and colour; she would often quote Matisse’s conviction that ‘colour is the result of a condensed sensation, therefore it is intuitive and passionate.’