Fran ç ois Giro: The Glorious Life of the Century

 Auction Information     |      未知    |    2023-06-17 17:25
Fran ç ois Giro passed away recently at the age of 101. Christie's Hong Kong held a solo exhibition of Gilot's works in 2021 to celebrate his 100th birthday. Please review the colorful life of artists together with us
November 26th is the 100th birthday of renowned French artist Fran ç oise Gilot. When she was five years old, she went to Swiss Alps with her parents. A childhood conversation in that year vividly foreshadowed her later long and rich life and artistic creation.
 
Little Fran ç ois was moved by the beautiful light green grasslands and deep green forests before her, so she asked her father if he had seen the same scenery - "In other words, is her perspective objective or subjective
Mr. Gilo sneered at this "foolish" question because "everyone's retina is the same". However, the daughter reluctantly replied, "Yes, father, everyone has the same retina, but their imagination is different

Fran ç ois Giro (born in 1921), 'The White Clouds'
Oil paint charcoal brush canvas
100 x 81.5 centimeters (39 Å x 32 inches)
Made in 2014

For all friends who know Fran ç ois Giro, this childhood anecdote is absolutely believable: she has always maintained independent thinking, refused to cater to patriarchal culture, and believed that artistic inspiration mainly comes from the artist's inner depths, rather than from what she sees in front of her.
 
The Paris School of Painting rose in the French capital after World War II, and Gilot is one of the pioneer artists. She moved to the United States in 1970 and spent most of her artistic career there. (She currently resides in an apartment in the Upper West Side of Mankerton and also serves as a painting studio. She still creates almost every day to this day.)
 
To celebrate Francois Guillotine's 100th birthday, Christie's will hold a solo exhibition for artists at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, presenting more than 30 important works from different periods of her artistic career, 11 of which are available for private purchase.


Fran ç ois Guillot, Paris, 1943. Photographed by Endre Rozda

Artists once said that there are two types of people in the world: "those with courage, and those without courage. If you are the former, life will be full of ups and downs, but it is also much more interesting
 
Even a fleeting glance at Gilo's life shows that she has been full of courage from beginning to end. She is the only daughter in her family. She was born in 1921 in a wealthy big bourgeois family in Neue on Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris. My father is an agronomist, while my mother is a ceramist. She practices horseback riding every morning and receives education at home until the age of ten. In her own words, when she went to school, she was already far ahead of other children of the same age... If the rules and regulations were meaningless to me, I would refuse to blindly follow
 
Gilo graduated from the Sorbonne University in Paris with a Bachelor of Philosophy degree and entered the Law School in 1939. Later, the flames of war spread to Paris, and the capital fell under German cavalry. She decided to change her life direction and become a professional painter (until then, painting was only her hobby).
 
Gilo's father was angry because of this. She was beaten and ordered to leave home, but she stuck to her ideals and joined the studio of French Hungarian Surrealism artist Endre Rozsda.
 
Fran ç ois Giro (born 1921), "Abstract Nude. Oil paint canvas. 49.5 x 73 cm. Created in 1945
 
Gilo held her first exhibition in 1943, and that same year she met Pablo Picasso in a restaurant. When she was 21 years old and he was 61 years old, the huge age difference did not prevent the two from starting a ten-year intimate relationship. Giro once wrote a memoir about this experience, 'Life with Picasso', which was published in 1964. This best-selling book provides a detailed recollection of the time they spent together, so I won't go into detail here.
 
In short, she is his model, muse, butler, and mother of two children (Claude and Paloma), carrying various roles. But as time passed, Gilo became increasingly dissatisfied with this arrangement and eventually left Picasso, becoming the only lover in his life who took the initiative to bid farewell. Being with Picasso means I have to hide my personality, "Giro once said
 

Fran ç ois Giro (born in 1921), "Blue Studies. Oil painted wooden boards. 147 x 115.2 centimeters (57 ⅞ x 45 Å inches). Created in 1953

During the ten years that Giro and Picasso lived together, he clearly influenced her artistic creations: for example, she began to try to distort the human body in her paintings. But her painting techniques are more poetic than him, reducing the sense of violent conflict. Fran ç ois Giro's works have always been known for their poetic and ethereal qualities
 
In fact, it was not Picasso who had the most profound impact on Giro's artistic creation, but his close friend Matisse, as can be seen from the high saturation of colors in her paintings. In 1946, Matisse's health continued to deteriorate. Picasso and Giro came to visit this great French artist in the southeastern part of France. He immediately expressed his affection for her and said he liked her triangular and curved eyebrows.


Fran ç ois Giro (born in 1921), "The Painters". Oil painted wooden boards. 163.5 x 131 cm (64 Å x 51 ⅝ in). Created in 1952

Gilo was fortunate to have such a intimate relationship with two modern art giants in the early stages of her artistic career, but we should also note that she still opened up her own unique artistic path. After the end of the World War, she interacted with abstract artists of the new realism (R é alit é s Nouvelles) such as Sonia Delaunay and Nicolas de Staël. But Giro began to reintroduce concrete elements into his works in the late 1950s.
 
She later became more proficient in printmaking techniques such as slate printing and gravure etching. In 1980, she began creating the famous "Floating Paintings" series because these huge canvases were created on both sides, with only a wooden strip fixed above them. They were not hung on the wall, but hung in the air, seemingly floating in space.
 
Gilo's recent works adhere to a more minimalist style, capturing her wholehearted love for nature, time and space, and even the universe.
 
Fran ç ois Giro, 2010. Photographed by Kolas Engel
 
Aurelia Engel, the daughter of Giro, once said of her mother's "rich and colorful life": "Having art, love, and children at the same time: it was very rare for women in the mid-20th century to imagine having everything. Tradition dictates that they must make a choice. But my mother refuses to conform. She bravely pursues everything in life and is passionate about it
 
In November of this year, Christie's Hong Kong will hold its first solo artist exhibition for Fran ç ois Girolong. At this age, I often feel bored in life, "she smiled. But I never find painting boring