Throughout her life, French-born Francoise Gilot has combined artistic talent with academic achievement. When she was five years old her mother provided her with a set of watercolor paints and instructions. Her father obligated her to study international law. He was so demanding that he taught her to read Baudelaire when she had insomnia. At the age of twenty-one she left the University of Paris to study art at the Academie Julian. After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from the Sorbonne and a degree in English from Cambridge, she began to express herself through painting and other art forms.

From 1946 to 1953 she worked with Picasso, learning, teaching and sharing the wealth of his treme...