The Bird

Françoise Gilot recalled that her first revelation of natural beauty occurred when she was six years old and visited the south of France with her grandparents. Her love of the Mediterranean later expanded to encompass Italy, Tunisia, Greece, and Egypt. She wrote, “During the 1960s, all my energies focused on the Greek seashore.” The azure blue in paintings such as The Bird can be seen as reflecting her interest in Greece. Birds were a recurring motif throughout Gilot’s artistic career that began in the 1940s and lasted until her death in 2023.