Fran?se Gilot met her future lover, Pablo Picasso, in 1943 in German-occupied Paris. When she told him she was a painter, he burst out laughing. "A girl who looks like that," he said, "can't be a painter." Gilot was a 21 year-old beauty; Picasso was a 62 year-old world renowned painter. We're talking with Fran?se Gilot this hour on The Connection.
Gilot became his muse and companion, but never abandoned her own career. She continued to paint, became close friends with Matisse, Georges Braque and other artists, and had two children, Claude and Paloma, with Picasso. But after ten years, she grew tired of his egomania and, suspecting his eye was wandering, left him. When she did, Picasso told her, "Whatever you do from now on, your life will be lived before a mirror that will throw back at you everything you have lived through with me."
In 1990, the only woman to leave Picasso received France's greatest distinction - the Knight in the Legion of Honor -- for her career as artist, writer and feminist. We're talking with Fran?se Gilot this hour on The Connection. (Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
