Portrait of Françoise (Buste de Femme)

Accession Number
1994/1.68

Title
Portrait of Françoise (Buste de Femme)

Artist(s)
Pablo Picasso

Artist Nationality
Spanish (culture or style)

Object Creation Date
February 28, 1949

Medium & Support
oil on canvas

Dimensions
16 5/16 in x 13 ⅒ in (41.4 cm x 33.3 cm);24 in x 21 in x 1 ¾ in (60.96 cm x 53.34 cm x 4.45 cm)

Credit Line
Gift of The Carey Walker Foundation

Label copy
March 28, 2009
During the final years of World War II, Pablo Picasso began a relationship with a young painter named Françoise Gilot (born 1921). The couple had two children together before Gilot left Picasso in 1953. Portrait of Françoise—executed in long, linear strokes and concentrations of pigment—is one of a series of portraits of her in a variety of media made over the course of a year. Gilot had a strong character; she once asserted that Picasso’s portraits of her were “not boxes in which I fit. I’m not a prisoner of them.” Here her forceful nature is conveyed by the intensity of her gaze and the erectness of her posture.

Subject matter
Portrait by Picasso of his lover, Françoise Gilot. The portraits of her usually depict Gilot with a sharp, narrow face that recalls portraits of Spanish princesses by Diego Velasquez. Completed on February 28, 1949, one month before the birth of Picasso and Gilot’s second child, Paloma.

Physical Description
Bust portrait of woman. Her hair is brown, shoulder length, and curls at the bottom. Her high-collared blouse has off-white and light blue vertical stripes. She looks directly at the viewer

Primary Object Classification
Painting

Primary Object Type
portrait

Additional Object Classification(s)
Painting

Collection Area
Modern and Contemporary

Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.

Keywords
Cubist
Portraits
abstraction
bust-length
modern and contemporary art
oil painting (technique)
oil paintings (visual works)
portraits
wives
woman
women (female humans)

9 Related Resources

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(Part of 7 Learning Collections)
European Primitivisms
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Spanish Avant-Garde
(Part of 2 Learning Collections)
Translate-a-thon: Spanish
(Part of 2 Learning Collections)
Translate-a-thon: Asian Languages
(Part of: 2019 Translate-a-thon)
#5 Cubism / Modernism / Postmodernism / Primitivism
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& Author Notes

All Rights Reserved

On display

UMMA Gallery Location ➜ FFW, Mezzanine ➜ M01 (Joan and Robert Tisch Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art)