Francoise Gilot (last chance), Paula Modersohn-Becker

[Wilfrid]

I am embarrassed to recommend Francoise Gilot at Rosenberg on the UES because  it closes on July 3. I am so glad I got there. Her name was familiar  to me because of her relationship with Picasso, mother of the legendary Paloma and his son Claude. I knew she was a painter, and on the first floor of Rosenberg there are familiar works, including portraits of good old Pablo.

In the more extensive showings on the second floor, I was much more surprised to see her working in quite different forms through the 1980s and 1990s. And… fabulous full-colored abstracts up to a wonderful 2009 canvas.

I did notice the painting titles slide from Spanish to English along the way. She died last year, a New Yorker, aged 101. Some part of my brain may have registered that in an obituary, but I had not registered what an artist she was, developing to the end.

Modersohn-Becker, you have until September to see at Neue Galerie. Please do. Same and different. I have always known her name because she was part of a close circle around, no not Picasso, the poet Rilke. I saw her paintings among the photos in biographies of Rilke.

Here she is, as herself. The more familiar works, self-portraits including the pioneering self-portrait nude and pregnant, are here, but wow, the gallery of drawings of regular folks around the Worpspede village where she hung out with Rilke and other bohos.

So here’s the thing. Gilot, 101, still best known to many as Picasso’s partner. Modersohn-Becker dead at 31, from a post-partum thrombosis. After seeing that show, I thought about what her place in art could have been if she’d had another 50, 60 years. Then I saw the Gilot show and thought, she’d still me remembered mainly as a buddy of Rilke.

But all that aside, great shows.