Françoise Gilot, French artist who loved and left Picasso, dies at 101

French painter Françoise Gilot, who created artworks for more than 60 years but was better known for her rocky relationship with the much older Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, has passed away at the age of 101.

Gilot was Picasso's companion from 1946 to 1953 and established herself as a renowned painter after she famously left him.

Gilot's passing was confirmed by her daughter, Aurelia Engel, said her mother died on Tuesday at Mount Sinai West Hospital in New York after suffering lung and heart problems.

Referring to her seven years of living together with the painter, Gilot compared herself to Joan of Arc, saying she had survived the 'hell' of being Picasso's mistress after meeting him in a Paris restaurant at the age of 21.

“ You had to wear armour from morning to night, prove your strength 24 hours a day. We were very mismatched”.

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'Seductive but cruel'

While two of the other women in Picasso's life died by suicide, and two others had mental breakdowns, Gilot stood up to the giant of modern art, and was the only woman to leave him of her own accord.

"Pablo was the greatest love of my life, but you had to take steps to protect yourself. I did, I left before I was destroyed," she confided in Janet Hawley's 2021 book Artists and Conversation.

Gilet described Picasso, who was 40 years her senior, as "astonishingly creative, a magician, so intelligent and seductive” adding that we was “also very cruel, sadistic and merciless to others, as well as to himself".

During their 10 years together, Gilot and Picasso had two children, a son, Claude, born in 1947, and a daughter, Paloma, born in 1949. They never married.

Gilot had a third child, daughter Aurelia, with artist Luc Simon in 1956.

Turbulent break-up

When she told Picasso she was leaving him, Gilot said the surprised painter responded that she would never succeed in her own right.

“ You imagine people will be interested in you?” Gilot quoted Picasso as saying. “They won't ever, really, just for yourself. Even if you think people like you, it will only be a kind of curiosity they will have about a person whose life touched mine so intimately.”

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However Gilot rebuilt her life and went on to exhibit her paintings, drawings and prints in museums and private collections across Europe and the United States. She had also published books.

In June 2021, her painting Paloma à la Guitare sold for $ 1.3 million at auction at Sotheby's.

"She was an extremely talented artist, and we will be working on her legacy and the incredible paintings and works she is  leaving us with ," Engel said of her mother .