‘The warm mists were not lacking either in May of 1956 when Luc and I spent a month in Tunisia, mostly at Sidi-Bou-Said, but also in Tunis, Hammamet and Kairouan. The warm steam inside the hammam, where a friend accompanied me, enveloped people and things in an opalescent mist, and it became an important subject matter during 1956. During the same year, I also painted from memory the socks, the Berber nomads, the children in the streets carrying younger children on their back— a native life soaked in light. All these animated street scenes seem strangely familiar to me.’
In 1956, Gilot traveled to Tunisia with her husband Luc Simon, pregnant, at the t.mes , with her daughter Aurélia. The colors, people and quality of life had a deep impact on the artist and she returned to her Paris studio with the sketches she had made on the trip and began a series of canvases evoking the atmosphere of Tunisia. She writes of this trip: ‘The warm mists were not lacking either in May of 1956 when Luc and I spent a month in Tunisia, mostly at Sidi-Bou-Said, but also in Tunis, Hammamet and Kairouan. The warm steam inside the hammam, where a friend accompanied me, enveloped people and things in an opalescent mist, and it became an important subject matter during 1956. During the same year, I also painted from memory the socks, the Berber nomads, the children in the streets carrying younger children on their back— a native life soaked in light. All these animated street scenes seem strangely familiar to me.’ — Francoise Gilot
