'Life With Picasso' Stands As An Invaluable Work Of Art History

'Life With Picasso' Stands As An Invaluable Work Of Art History

Nightmare at the Picasso Museum

Lily Meyer
June 6, 2019

When the French painter and writer Françoise Gilot was 21, she met an older artist at a Paris restaurant. He invited her to visit his studio, and they quickly fell in love.

She defied her bourgeois family by moving in with him, and they remained together for 10 years. They raised two children, and she slowed her own career to be his muse, manager and support system. But this became untenable, and she left him, becoming a highly successful painter in her own right. As for the older artist — well, he was Pablo Picasso.

Lily Meyer / Translator's Note: Claudia Ulloa Donoso

Claudia Ulloa Donoso

Translator's Note: Claudia Ulloa Donoso

by Lily Meyer

Lily Meyer / Sobre Claudia Ulloa Donoso

The title story in Peruvian writer Claudia Ulloa Donoso’s collection Pajarito starts with a description of the narrator’s cat. He’s seven kilos, furry, antisocial. He has seven lives in Peru and nine in Norway, where he lost at least one by wandering outside in the polar winter. There are pictures of him on the author’s blog, but that’s not mentioned in the story. It’s just true.