Life with Picasso by Francoise Gilot and Carlton Lake

Described by critics as “the drama of a woman who after ten years of living together with a genious couldn’t take any more“, this book “testefies that art is a deadly dangerous region, for which you pay with your life” (Karl Korn, Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung).

When sixty-two year old Picasso met twenty-one year old student painter Francoise Guilot, he made it very clear to her that “when love begins, it is already recorded somewhere, as it is its duration and content“. The book gives great inside to Picasso’s personality and how he was in his intimacy, with his boosts in temperament and manipulative character.
Though a bitter report by Gilot of ten years of living together, the book also allows a bit of insight into Picasso’s way of thinking, his art drive and all the people that populated his life. Especially interesting is the remark that in the ten years of their relationship Picasso and Guillot never really shared a social life, as Picasso was obcessed with his art.