Françoise Gilot-Salk
Ask Françoise Gilot about her approach to painting and she'll quickly admit to feeling a kind of vertigo in front of an empty white canvas -- waiting to fill its void with a restless thrust of energy. However, by nature, Gilot does not begin a new canvas to verify what she knows, but rather to engage in an equation with the unknown through the balance of shape and form, signs and symbols. When combined with her masterful orchestration of color, Gilot infuses her canvases with radiating depth without the reliance on traditional perspective.
From the time of her first canvas in 1939, Gilot’s paintings have always possessed a sense of the monumental; they hold their own on a wall regardless of their actual size. And Gilot sees her art as more heroic than sentimental. In 1980, she began a new series of works, painted in thin layers of acrylic paint on unstretched canvas, which could literally "float" within a space. Suggesting the Kakemonos from Japan or the large Tankas of Tibet, Gilot adapted her techniques as a more traditional painter to create powerfully large, color field graphic interpretations reminiscent of theatre backdrops. Telluric in nature, these floating paintings are not traditionally allegorical, but rather embody emblems and symbols. Sun Emblem (1980), the signature image for Symphony at Salk 2009, is Gilot’s most well known example of this series of paintings that seem to levitate within time and space, liberating the imagination of both artist and viewer.
Rather than describe, these floating paintings evoke or characterize with a great economy of means. Like sails, they entice one to depart, to embark on a voyage toward uncharted horizons. "All art, being abstract, symbolical and conventional, reveals not only what it portrays, but also an equivalent of an essence," says Gilot. "Its inner and utmost reality does not duplicate an object or a subject, but creates a means, a way, a rhythm, which moves our minds in the direction of what is evoked. The eye will be captured and the mind compelled to believe."
Born in 1921 in Neuilly, near Paris, Gilot abandoned her university studies in international law in the early 1940s to devote herself to the pursuit of painting. Her first exhibition was in 1943, when she was only 21 years old. During the 1940s and 1950s, Gilot developed strong friendships with the legendary artists of the time, including Matisse, Braque and Cocteau.
She also began a well-known 11-year partnership with Pablo Picasso, then 40 years her senior, with whom she had two children, Claude and Paloma. Gilot's youngest daughter, Aurelia, was born during Gilot's marriage in the mid 1950s to French artist, Luc Simon. By the late 1960s, she was an internationally recognized artist and best-selling author.
In 1970, Gilot married Dr. Jonas Salk, less than a year after mutual friends in La Jolla introduced them. Gilot knew the science of art and Dr. Salk was known for his encouragement of artistic approaches to science. She maintained studios in New York, Paris and California, and their partnership was a vital international presence in art circles, as well as in the scientific community for 25 years. And although Gilot returned to live in New York following Dr. Salk’s death in 1995, she has graciously continued to serve as Honorary Chair of Symphony at Salk -- A Concert Under the Stars each year since its inauguration in 1996.