Picasso and Françoise Gilot

Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my paintings, and everything else is sacrificed to it . . . myself included.
—Pablo Picasso

You see, for me a painting is a dramatic action in the course of which the reality finds itself split apart. For me, that dramatic action takes precedence over all other considerations. The pure plastic act is only secondary as far as I’m concerned. What counts is the drama of that plastic art, the moment at which the universe comes out of itself and meets its own destruction.
—Françoise Gilot

Gagosian is pleased to present Picasso and Françoise Gilot: Paris–Vallauris 1943–1953, the fourth major exhibition in an ongoing series on the life and work of Pablo Picasso, following the critical and popular success of Picasso: Mosqueteros (2009), Picasso: The Mediterranean Years (2010), and Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: L’amour fou (2011). The exhibition includes many important loans from museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; as well as from private lenders.

This exhibition is a departure from its precedents in that it has been conceived as a visual and conceptual dialogue between the art of Picasso and the art of Françoise Gilot, his young muse and lover during the period of 1943 to 1953. The result of an active collaboration between Gilot and Picasso’s biographer John Richardson, assisted by Gagosian director Valentina Castellani, Picasso and Françoise Gilot celebrates the full breadth and energy of Picasso’s innovations during these postwar years, presenting Gilot’s paintings alongside his marvelously innovative depictions of her and their family life. It is the first time that their work has been exhibited together—that the painterly dialogue between the fascinated mature male artist and the self-possessed young female artist can be retraced and explored.