SAINT PHALLE, NIKI DE

* 29.10.1930 Neuilly-sur-Seine, † 21.5.2002 San Diego

Niki de Saint Phalle was born Cathérine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint-Phalle in Neuilly-sur-Seine on 29 October 1930. Three years later she moved with her family to New York, where she attended the Sacré-Coeur convent school from 1936 to 1945. As a child she suffered serious abuse. At the age of eighteen, she married the American writer Harry Mathews, with whom she had two children.Before Niki de Saint Phalle turned to fine art, she worked successfully as a model and appeared on the covers of the most important fashion magazines such as ‘Vogue’ and ‘Life’ in the early 1950s.

After a nervous breakdown in 1953, Niki de Saint Phalle discovered painting as a form of therapy. She turned her back on the fashion world, left her husband and two children, moved to Paris, and devoted herself exclusively to art as a self-taught artist.The Swiss painter and sculptor Jean Tinguely, whom she met in the French capital in 1955 and married in 1971, inspired her and familiarised her with the quirks and challenges of sculpture. Thanks to Tinguely, Niki de Saint Phalle was introduced to the artists' group ‘Nouveau Réalisme’, which she joined in 1961.

She first became known for her ‘shooting pictures’. With her world-famous ‘Nana figures’, which appear almost childlike and were initially ridiculed by fellow artists, she achieved her artistic breakthrough in the mid-1960s. With her slogan ‘all power to the Nanas’, which she saw as heralding the beginnings of a matriarchy, Niki de Saint Phalle took up the ideas of the women's movement that were in the air at the time. The sensual female figures with their voluminous body shapes, which she first formed using wire and fabric, then polyester, initially caused an enormous scandal. Later, the colourful sculptures, which the artist designed as pieces of jewellery, snake chairs, vases, lamps, and perfume bottles, became a symbol of female self-confidence and strength.Niki de Saint Phalle invested a great deal of energy and money in the ‘Tarot Garden’, which she created not far from Rome over a 15-year period beginning in 1979. With this park, she created her largest and most important work of art. The park boasts 22 huge sculptures with mosaics, mirrors, coloured glass, and ceramic pieces embedded in a wonderfully green landscape. Together with Jean Tinguely, in 1983 she created the ‘Igor Stravinsky Fountain’ in front of the Pompidou Centre in Paris.Due to years of working with polyester, synthetic resin, dust, and toxic fumes, she became seriously ill with respiratory problems. Because of her asthma, her doctor ordered her to move to the mild Pacific climate of California in 1993. In San Diego, she began constructing kinetic sculptures, the ‘Meta-Tinguelys’. She dedicated this last large series of works to Jean Tinguely, who had died in 1991. Niki de Saint Phalle died in San Diego on 21 May 2002.

SIKART Lexikon zur Kunst in der Schweiz

Colette Guisolan-Dreyer, 2016 https://www.sikart.ch/kuenstlerinnen.aspx?id=4021948

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Lot 3666 - A211 Prints & Multiples - Thursday 28 November 2024, 02.00 PM

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SAINT PHALLE, NIKI DE

* 29.10.1930 Neuilly-sur-Seine, † 21.5.2002 San Diego

SIKART Lexikon zur Kunst in der Schweiz

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NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE

NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE

NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE

NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE

NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE

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NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE & JEAN TINGUELY