Françoise Gilot

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris
Françoise Gilot, Paris & New York
Acquired from the above

Françoise Gilot, Françoise Gilot, Monograph 1940-2000, Lausanne, 2000, illustrated in color p. 134

Canvas is not lined. Edge are reinforced with tape. Under UV light two small lines of inpainting near lower left corner; three small spots near lower right corner. Approximately 18 inches up from the bottom right corner a horizontal five inch line of inpainting extends inwards and three small vertical lines are visible an inch below this line. One pindot of inpainting near the male child's shoulder and a jagged diagonal hairline of inpainting extends from three inches above the male child's head to the right of the female child's shoulder. Some retouching in a vertical line extending down from center of the top edge about eight inches in length. Another smaller vertical retouching extends from the top edge at center right and a small spot fluoresces near the upper right corner, otherwise fine. This work is in generally good condition.
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In the present work, painted in 1956, Gilot depicts herself narrating a story to her two young children, Claude and Paloma. The children stand huddled together, entranced, their eyes concentrated intently on their mother. Gilot later explained that the rather mysterious empty space that exists between the mother’s hands was once occupied by a puppet, which the artist discarded after determining that it created an overly “anecdotal” scene. One puppet now lies abandoned in the corner of the composition, and another falls limply in the young boy’s right hand. As Gilot notes, her decision to shift the focus from these narrative details so that they occupied only the periphery of the scene occasioned an important change in tone: “the painting acquire[d] lyricism and a poetic appeal, [with] the narrative details no longing getting more attention than necessary so as not to burden the whole composition” (Françoise Gilot, Françoise Gilot, Monograph 1940-2000, Lausanne, 2000, p. 137).