Gilot’s line is the first thing you notice, her tool for expressing an image. In her portraits in pencil, the line becomes the central element, almost tattooed into the paper. In her paintings, both figurative and abstract, Gilot’s line acts either as a boundary of form or as a central element or elements, weaving in and out amongst the other forms or creating complicated knots and patterns. Rosenberg & Co., in New York City, is presenting a survey of Gilot’s work this spring, the first since the artist’s death at age 101 a year ago. The works on view, through July 3, cover seven decades of her practice, starting with drawings and paintings from 1944, meandering through myriad works on paper, monotypes, oils, and ending with an abstract painting from 2007.
Françoise Gilot was born in 1921 in Neuilly on the outskirts of Paris. She was an only child who came from a wealthy background, one which allowed her many opportunities and much choice early on in life. Her father frequently made it clear that he had desired her father had her locked in a chimpanzee cage at the Antwerp Zoo in 1926—Gilot was five—as a kind of prank-cum-toughening-up exercise.
