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Lot 3628 - A191 Prints & Multiples - Saturday, 07. December 2019, 10.00 AM

PABLO PICASSO

(Málaga 1881–1973 Mougins)
Françoise. 1946.
Lithograph. 2/50. Signed in pencil lower right: Picasso, also dated in the plate: 14 juin 46. Image 59.5 x 48.5 cm on wove paper by Arches 66 x 49.2 cm.

Catalogue raisonné: Bloch, no. 396.

Literature: Gauss, Ulrike (ed.): Pablo Picasso. Die Lithographie. Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Münster. Die Sammlung Huizinga, Ostfildern-Ruit 2000, no. 147/40.

The painter Françoise Gilot lived with Pablo Picasso for ten years. A disaster, she says – but a wonderful one.

Françoise Gilot (born 1921) was the woman at Picasso’s side for ten years. Françoise Gilot is herself a painter and met Pablo Picasso in 1943 at her own exhibition. The then 22-year-old and Picasso, 40 years her senior, became a couple. She lived with him in Paris as well as in Southern France. There were two children from the relationship, Claude and Paloma. They called their daughter Paloma, which means dove, named after the dove which became the symbol of peace worldwide, which appears in Picasso’s poster for the Paris Peace Congress in 1949, the same year their daughter was born.
Françoise, herself also an artist, is said to have been the only person in the life of the master, who to some extent kept him in check. She is regarded as the most independent and most intelligent of Picasso’s lovers, and Françoise was, amongst other things, the first woman who was not abandoned by Picasso, but who ended the relationship herself. Many years after the separation, she published two books about Picasso: "My life with Picasso" (1964) and "Matisse and Picasso. A friendship in art" (1990). Today, at the age of 97, Françoise Gilot lives and works in New York.

Picasso used portraits of Françoise as the model for countless experiments, both in paintings and prints, in various facets and styles. The lithograph offered here at auction from 1946 comes from his mature phase of printmaking in which he turned again to lithography.

With his characteristic formal language, Picasso has succeeded in creating a significant portrait of his then muse, who in his pictures always has her right eyebrow raised. Françoise, with her characteristic full and lavish head of hair, looks at the viewer with a self-assured and challenging gaze – with the finest strokes, Picasso has created an extraordinary portrait of a strong woman.


CHF 25 000 / 35 000 | (€ 25 770 / 36 080)

Sold for CHF 67 400 (including buyer’s premium)
All information is subject to change.