Artist Françoise Gilot, acclaimed painter who loved and later left Picasso, is dead at 101 Lapid bill seeks to expand discount, VAT exemption for senior citizens

By Wilnard Bacelonia

By Jocelyn Noveck AP National Writer

NEW YORK—Françoise Gi- lot, a prolific and acclaimed painter who produced art for well more than a half-century but was nonetheless more famous for her turbulent relationship with Pablo Picasso—and for leaving him—died Tuesday in New York City, where she had lived for decades. She was 101.

Gilot’s daughter, Aurelia Engel, told The Associated Press her mother had died at Mount Sinai West hospital after suffering both lung and heart problems. “She was an extremely talented artist, and we will be working on her legacy and the incredible paintings and works she is leaving us with,” Engel said.

The French-born Gilot had long made her frustration clear that despite acclaim for her art, which she produced from her teenage years until five years ago, she would still be best known for her relationship with the older Picasso, whom she met in 1943 at age 21, his junior by four decades. The union produced two children—Claude and Paloma Picasso. But unlike the other key women in Picasso’s life—wives or paramours —Gilot eventually walked out.

“He never saw it coming,” Engel said of her mother’s departure. “She was there because she loved him and because she really believed in that incredible passion of art which they both shared. [But] she came as a free, though very, very young, but very independent person.”

Gilot herself told The Guardian newspaper in 2016 that “I was not a prisoner” in the relationship.

“I’d been there of my own will, and I left of my own will,” she said, then 94. “That’s what I told him once, before I left. I said: ‘Watch out, because I came when I wanted to, but I will leave when I want.’ He said, ‘Nobody leaves a man like me.’ I said, ‘We’ll see.’”

Gilot wrote several books, the most famous of which was “Life with Picasso,” written in 1964 with Carlton Lake. An angry Picasso sought unsuccessfully to ban its publication.

“He attacked her in court, and he lost three times,” said Engel, 66, an architect by training who now manages her mother’s archives. But, she said, “after the third loss he called her and said congratulations. He fought it, but at the same time, I think he was proud to have been with a woman who had such guts like he had.”

Born on November 26, 1921, in leafy Neuilly-sur-Seine in suburban Paris, Gilot was an only child.

“She knew at the age of five that she wanted to be a painter,” Engel said. In accordance with her parents’ wishes, she studied law, however, while maintaining art as her true passion. She first exhibited her paintings in 1943.

That was the year she met Picasso, by chance, when she and a friend vis- ited a restaurant on the Left Bank, amid a gathering that included his then-companion, Dora Maar. “I was 21 and I felt that painting was already my whole life,” she writes in “Life With Picasso.” When Picasso asked Gilot and her friend what they did, the friend responded that they were painters, to which Picasso responded, Gilot writes: “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day. Girls who look like that can’t be painters.”

The two were invited to visit Picasso in his studio, and the relationship soon began.

Not long after leaving Picasso in 1953, Gilot reunited with a former friend, artist Luc Simon, and married him in 1955. They had a daughter —Engel—and divorced in 1962. In 1970, Gilot married Jonas Salk, the American virologist and researcher famed for his work with the polio vaccine, and began living between California and Paris, and later New York. When he died in 1995, Gilot moved full-time to New York and spent her last years on the Upper West Side.

Her art only increased in value over the years. In 2021 her “Paloma à la Guitare” (1965) sold for $1.3 million at a Sotheby’s auction. Her work was shown in many prominent museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. Her life with Picasso was illustrated in the 1996 movie “Surviving Picasso,” directed by James Ivory.

Simon Shaw, Sotheby’s vice chairman for global fine art, said it had been gratifying to see, in the past decade, Gilot’s paintings “achieve the recognition they truly deserved.”

“To see Françoise as a muse [to Picasso] is to miss the point,” Shaw wrote in an e-mail. “She was established on her course as a painter when first she met Pablo. While her work naturally entered into dialogue with his, Françoise pursued a course fiercely her own—her art, like her character, was filled with color, energy and joy.”

Engel noted that although the relationship with Picasso was clearly a difficult one, it gave her mother a certain freedom from her parents and the constraints of a bourgeois life—and perhaps enabled her to pursue her true dream of being a professional painter, a passion she shared with Picasso above all else.

“They both believed that art was the only thing in life worth doing,” she said. “And she was able to be her true self, even though it was not an easy life with him. But still she was able to be her true self.”

And for Engel, her mother’s key legacy was not only her creativity but also her courage, reflected in her art, which was always changing, never staying safe.

“She was not without fear. But she would always confront her fears and jump in the void and take risks, no matter what,” Engel said.

Senator Lito Lapid, who filed Senate Bill 2169, on Monday said the measure seeks to increase the current 50-percent discount from the current 100 kilowatt hours (kWh) of power and an increase from the previous 30 cubic meters of water consumption for senior citizens.

Lapid also proposes to exempt senior citizens from the 12-percent value-added tax (VAT) as long as the bill is under their name.

“Many senior citizens are poor and find it challenging to manage and budget their pension, so it is only appropriate to provide and offer them with some relief through VAT exemption and an expanded coverage on the percent discount on water and electricity consumption,” he explained in a statement.

The lawmaker said the measure is also a way for our society to show gratitude and support to senior citizens who made significant contributions to the country’s economy during their youth.

“Any form of aid, assistance, or support that we can give to senior citizens serves a meaningful gesture to convey our love, affection, and concern for their invaluable contributions to our society,” Lapid said.

The proposed measure would be very beneficial to senior citizens who have no income and are short on expenses for their food, medicine and other basic necessities, he added.

Republic Act 9994 or the Ex-

Two old friends in crisis

WHAT matters is not what life does to you, but rather how you deal with it. This is attributed to the Greek philosopher Epictetus.

I know of two people who came to a crucible point recently and here’s how they responded.

Rollie (not his real name) was an artist, and about 40 years ago we were co-employees in an ad agency. I remember him as a jolly fellow, always making jokes. I’ve lost touch with him but someone who was close to him told me that in recent years, Rollie was feeling distraught, gloomy and heavy-hearted, calling friends and asking, no begging, to be treated out. Nothing can be more pitiful than a person beseeching friends for warmth of company.

Anyway, one or two friends would oblige Rollie, and would fetch him at home and treat him to lunch and coffee. I was told that he seemed truly happy one moment and then agitated and anxious all of a sudden.

It soon became a regular thing and friends began regarding him as a pesky nuisance.

Soon, even his own immediate family found his melancholy unbearable, and would go out on pretended errands to escape his presence, leaving him to brood and glumly watch TV all by his lonesome self.

There is a native expression “ang bigat niyang dalhin,” which would have applied to Rollie in his gloomy state. Everybody felt being sucked into his black hole of depression and avoided him.

By Nick Tayag

WORtH

Then just the other day, I got the news that he passed on. He must have been so forlorn and tired of feeling gloomy, he just gave up. Depressing? Here’s the flip side of my friends-in-crisis story.

Early this year, we learned that panded Senior Citizens’ Act of 2010 currently limits the application of the 5-percent discount on water and electricity consumption only to senior citizens whose usage does not exceed 100 kWh and 30 cubic meters of water.

Meanwhile, Lapid also filed a bill seeking to introduce three crucial reforms in Republic Act 9513 or the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 that would promote the use of renewable energy (RE) technology in homes, and strengthen the net-metering program in the country.

Senate Bill 2138, which Lapid filed on May 23, proposes to remove the 100 kilowatts (kW) threshold for distributed energy system, make the application procedures and the permitting process for the Net Metering Program standardized and expedited, and mandates a parity

Seated on a chair she was all smiles, and warmly welcomed us. There were no tubes up her noses. She was breathing normally as she talked, never gasping for breath. All in all, she looked composed, at peace with herself, eliciting a kind of radiant warm feeling that we found so soothing and calming. Funny, Trina was the sick person and yet we who were supposedly healthy were the ones being consoled by her presence. We went home that day feeling lighthearted and filled with admiration for Trina.

These two contrasting stories bring us to this question: Why do so many elderly folks suddenly become anxious and plunge into deep depression while many others look so ebullient, cheery and full of life even when facing trials in the late stage of their lives?

My answer: It’s a matter of at-

Your attitude determines how you respond to what life deals you.

It is an attitude that is anchored on your spirituality. By spirituality I don’t mean being religious or pious, although that’s one sign of spirituality. It is a belief that we are spiritual beings and that there is something greater than oneself, something more to being human.

A healthy spirituality can help us deal with stress by giving us a sense of peace, purpose, and forgiveness. It often becomes more important in times of emotional stress or illness.

What does our inner self need for a healthy spiritu- pricing methodology that credits end-users the full retail price of the surplus electricity contributed to the electricity grid.

In a statement on Friday, Lapid said removing the 100-kW threshold will ease the installment of solar panel system from a household to the national grid.

“If we can hasten the installation of residential solar panels to the national grid, our countrymen will have the chance to help address the power crisis in their own little way,” the lawmaker said.

Related to this, SB 2138 also mandates the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to routinely determine the maximum kW capacity for distributed generation while taking into account potential implications on the grid’s reliability and captive consumers’ retail rates. PNA have devoted it to painting to his heart’s content. Or he could have been a teacher, sharing his artistic skills with young or old people.

Nobody thought of inviting him to a group with a common passion, be it biking, karaoke singing, or mountain climbing or urban farming. Maybe a group on a mission such as climate action education. He could have been asked to be part of the parish lay ministry in his local church.

Trina, on the other hand, nurtured her spiritual life early. As a pianist and music teacher, she imbibed the uplifting power of music and saw the transforming ability of music in her piano students. She is well connected to a community greater than herself. She has Catholic nuns as her friends and being in their company must have helped deepen her spirituality. Then later we found out she recently became part of a religious order as a tertiary member serving God outside the convent.

Thus, Trina possesses the wondrous gifts of inner strength and grace to accept that life has much suffering and joy. She knows her suffering isn’t in vain and instead it’s something she can grow from. There is meaning in her suffering. She also feels one with a community that provides her a great spiritual lift.

Trina (not her real name), a dear lady friend of ours, was diagnosed with cancer in an advanced stage.

After finding out that visits would be allowed, we dropped by their house where she was staying while being treated.

Usually, people with cancer at an advanced stage are bed-ridden and look emaciated, wracked with pain, bald, having difficulty in breathing and so on.

But when we entered her room, what a surprise: Trina looked so different from what we anticipated.

In his book “Search for Meaning,” the famous concentration camp survivor Victor Frankl wrote: “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” More succinctly: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how.’”

Each of us needs to feel as though we’re doing something that contributes to the greater good. This can be parenting, serving others, or anything else where we have a hand in making life better for those around us.

Sadly, the late Rollie was not able to latch on to a meaningful pursuit that would have added more life to his last years. As an artist, he could

In contrast, Rollie saw only darkness in the remaining years of his life. His entreaties to be treated to lunch were a call for authentic connection. Avoided by friends who used to patronize and humor him, feeling alone and abandoned, Rollie found no more existential meaning, seeing only a dismal dead-end.

Much like the characters of the play “No Exit” by Jean-Paul Sartre, he came to the conclusion that he no longer had control over his own existence and the only exit was to put an end to it.

One last important point. Encompassing our spiritual need for meaning, purpose and connection is our need to love and be loved. This is the ultimate wellspring that nourishes our spirituality. To quote Victor Frankl again: “The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

Rollie lacked love. Trina overflows with love. In the words of the poet: “If

Mike