https://www.varfok-galeria.hu/en/gilot100-anniversary-exhibition-of-francoise-gilot/
A fascinating gem of a show. The range of her work - styles. techniques, approaches - is astonishingly varied and a remarkable testament to her extraordinarily long creative life. There was a fascinating film showing her creating screen prints (?) and the collaborative nature of that process was intriguing. Yes, of course one saw the influence of Picasso and Matisse, but always she made her vision her own - and I liked the way that as you came in you saw that iconic photograph of her on the beach, followed by Pablo P holding a sunshade over her. Given his actions and reactions when she left him and asserted her independence, it was a marvellous, perhaps the only, choice for an opening image - he was in her shadow!
Of her work, I particularly loved the vivid oils of flowers, and the vibrant colours of her later images from her trip to North Africa - wonderfully redolent of that steamy and vivid heat and with their evocative geometric shapes so powerfully evoking buildings and shapes from that area.. The apparently simpler images, in black and white and almost minimal in their simplicity were also marvellous - so simple and yet communicating so much. The ‘floating’ pictures were also intriguing - but for me, more for their techniques and how they were (necessarily) hung than for their content.
So, as ever, Varfok does it again!