1989-2000 The Wanderer - The Comets

In 1989, Gilot purchases a double height artist studio in New York, built in the 1900. This will become her “forever home”. Upon moving there, Gilot is pained by the many homeless people in the city. Their plight reminds her of the people displaced during World War II. Entering a philosophical reflection, the artist creates the character of the Wanderer, a small silhouette lost in an immense landscape. A few years later, the small beings disappear altogether and are replaced by imposing celestial bodies seen up close. Gilot selects the comets as the new wanderers, seemingly unpredictable in their course.

It is also a period of mourning as in 1995, Dr. Jonas Salk passes away in La Jolla with Gilot by his side. She publishes Stone Echoes: Original Prints by Françoise Gilot – A Catalogue Raisonné at The University of Pennsylvania Press. In 1999, Endre Rozsda passes away in Paris. In his honor, she joins the Várfok Galéria, in Budapest, Hungary. She publishes Françoise Gilot, Monograph 1940-2000 at Acatos, Lausanne in 2000.

In 1996, the President Jacques Chirac awards Gilot the rank of “Officier de l’Ordre National du Mérite”.