Françoise Gilot

Acquired directly from the artist

Oceanside, California, Oceanside Museum of Art & Collegeville, Pennsylvania, Philip & Muriel Berman Museum of Art, Transitions, Works by Françoise Gilot, 2011-12, n.n.

Françoise Gilot, Françoise Gilot, Monograph 1940-2000, Lausanne, 2000, illustrated in color p. 269 & on the cover

The work is in very good condition. The canvas is not lined. Minor pigment shrinkage is present in the darker blue and blue-green pigments in the center left and center right of the composition. Under UV light: no inpainting is apparent.
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Françoise Gilot was the only woman in Picasso's life who truly challenged him. Leaving him in 1953 for the French painter Luc Simon, in 1970 she married the inventor of the polio vaccine, Jonas Salk, with whom Gilot found happiness in La Jolla, Californa until his death in 1995. Painted just two years after Salk's passing, the present work recalls the intensity of the Pacific ocean as well as the nautical iconography and the saturated jewel tones of southern California. However, Gilot attributed the inspiration for this painting to her own experiences abroad. Mel Yoakum describes how "Painted from memory following Gilot's first journey to Egypt in late 1997, this lyrical canvas evokes, with an economy of means and through a more atypical, open composition, a felucca floating in the delta of the Nile. Having always associated sailboats with the exhilaration of flight, Gilot suggests the wings of a bird in the echo of the sail. The large passages of congenial blues—some more green, other more lavender—demonstrate Gilot's own alchemy in creating a watery landscape through the playful, yet sophisticated, juxtaposition of saturated tones and gossamer glazes of color on color" (Mel Yoakum in Françoise Gilot, op. cit., p. 269). An iconic work from Gilot's oeuvre, this work is illustrated on the cover of the artist's monograph by Mel Yoakum (see fig. 1). 



The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Françoise Gilot and it is registered in the artist’s archives.