Niki de SAINT PHALLE

NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE (b. 1930, Neuilly sur Seine - d. 2002, San Diego)

Known for her “Nanas”, a series of buxom, colorful women crafted out of wire, papier maché and polyester (her trademark material in the public eye), Niki de Saint Phalle has left her mark on the history of twentieth-century art.
Working with plastics, paint and sculpture, she began her completely self-taught painting career in 1952, garnering fame throughout the 1960s with her “Tirs” performances, which she presented all over the world. Saint Phalle would shoot a rifle at various packets of color hung upon a canvas, creating random works. This destructive, violent gesture highlighted a rejection of traditional easel painting, and became basic principle of Saint Phalle’s work.

In 1960 she became a member of the Nouveaux Réalistes, and befriended Jean Tinguely, who she would marry in 1971. The two created many works together, including “Le Cyclop”, Fontainebleau ; “La fontaine Stravinsky”, Paris ; “Le Jardin des Tarots” in Tuscany ; and notably, in 1966, “Hon”, a monumental work created for the Modern Museum of Stockholm.
Saint Phalle’s work is deeply connected to her personal life; the death of Tinguely in 1991 pushed her into a brief creative silence, from which she emerged to create works in tribute to her husband. In 1999, she returned to very small exhibitions of her work from the 1960s: she crafted pieces in bronze and created small characters in tubings, upon which hang small animals (“Le pendu”, 1999).

Today, Saint Phalle is considered a pioneer of her generation, and her work is celebrated worldwide. The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington decided to install four of her sculptures to inaugurate the New York Avenue Sculpture Project, which is devoted to the work of female artists.

Yves Malrin