Niki de Saint Phalle

Niki de Saint Phalle was a French painter, assembly artist, sculptor, performer, printmaker, and experimental filmmaker who, throughout her prolific career, created a complex body of work that often addressed and challenged contemporary socio-political issues, religion, and culture. Widely noted as one of the few female monumental sculptors, Saint Phalle, much like Andy Warhol (1928–1987, American visual artist and leading figure in the pop art movement, considered one of the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century), used the media to skilfully guide the reception of her work. Known for her social commitment, Saint Phalle was, throughout her life, outspoken in addressing pressing issues of the times, like equality, gender, reproductive rights, race, and climate change. Her groundbreaking Tirs series of assemblages (shot through by firearms), for example, reflected the violence of the early 1960s Algerian War for independence from France, whilst her best-known and most prolific series of sculptures, the whimsical, light-hearted, and colourful Nanas, explored the various roles of women, asserting her place as an artist very much part of second-wave feminism.

Niki de Saint Phalle (born Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle) first saw the light of day in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris. Her father was Count André-Marie de Saint Phalle (1906–1967), a French banker, and her mother was an American, named Jeanne Jacqueline Harper (1908–1980). At an early age Saint Phalle moved with her family to Greenwich, Connecticut, U.S.A. where her father had found work as manager of the American branch of the Saint Phalle family’s bank. In 1937, the family relocated to an affluent Upper East Side neighbourhood of New York City. By this time, Marie-Agnès was known as ‘Niki’, the name she would use from then on.

Saint Phalle grew up in a strict Catholic environment, against which she repeatedly rebelled, where her temperamental and violent mother used to beat the children (both of Saint Phalle’s younger siblings would later commit suicide as adults). Decades later, referring to the tense environment where she grew up as enfer (‘hell’), Saint Phalle would also reveal that she had suffered years of sexual abuse from her father, starting at the age of 11.

During her late teenage years, Saint Phalle became a fashion model, appearing (at the age of 18) on the cover of Life and, three years later, on the cover of French Vogue. She was also featured within the pages of Elle and Harper’s Bazaar. Around this time, Saint Phalle began to paint in oils and gouaches, and in 1949 she married Harry Mathews, with their first child, Laura, arriving in 1951. The following year the family moved to Paris, embarking on an ambulatory way of life, which, in 1954, brought them to Majorca, Spain, where the son Philip was born in 1955.

While in Spain, Saint Phalle visited Barcelona, where she became deeply affected by the work of architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926, Catalan architect and designer from Spain, widely known as the greatest exponent of Catalan Modernisme, whose works, including the Sagrada Família church, have a sui generis style, combining crafts such as ceramics, stained glass, wrought ironwork forging, and carpentry). Gaudí’s influence offered many previously unimagined possibilities for Saint Phalle, especially the use of unexpected materials and objets-trouvés as structural elements in sculpture and architecture. Saint Phalle was particularly struck by Gaudí’s Park Güell, which would inspire her to one day create her own garden-based artwork that would combine artistic and natural elements.

Saint Phalle continued to paint, and her first art exhibition was held in 1956 in Switzerland, where she displayed her naïve style of oil painting. 1956 was also the year when Saint Phalle met the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely (1925–1991, sculptor best known for his kinetic art sculptural machines, Métamatics, that extended the Dada tradition into the later part of the 20th century) for the first time and attempted her first large-scale sculpture, enlisting Tinguely to make an iron armature, which she covered with plaster and paint.

In 1959 Saint Phalle, for the first time, encountered artworks by Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968, French painter, sculptor, and writer whose work, associated with Cubism, Dada, and Futurism, was a seminal influence on the development of conceptual art), Yves Klein (1928–1962, French artist who was a pioneer in the development of performance art whilst also being a leading member of the French artistic movement Nouveau réalisme), Daniel Spoerri (1930–2024, Romanian-born Swiss visual artist and writer considered to be an important figure among the artists within the so-called ‘second wave’ of the pop art movement), and Willem de Kooning (1904–1997, Dutch-American abstract expressionist). Seeing these avant-garde works triggered her ‘first great artistic crisis’ , leading her to switch from oil painting to gouaches and gloss paint whilst also beginning to produce assemblages from household objects and castoffs. By this time, she had decided to dedicate herself fully to art, free from the obligations of everyday family life.

In 1960, Saint Phalle and Harry thus separated (by mutual agreement), and she soon moved in with Tinguely, who by then had separated from his own wife. In many ways, Saint Phalle and Tinguely were opposites, and sometimes they had violent disagreements (as well as frequent affairs with others). They would, however, live together intermittently and collaborate closely on artistic projects for over a decade before marrying in 1971. Two years later they separated but remained on good terms and continued to collaborate on various projects up through Tinguely’s death in 1991.

Lacking formal education, Saint Phalle (whose idiosyncratic style has been referred to as ‘outsider art’) took her inspiration from artists like Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985, French painter and sculptor of the École de Paris/School of Paris whose idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so-called ‘low art’, eschewing traditional standards of beauty in favour of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making. He is perhaps best known for founding the art movement art brut), and Jackson Pollock (1912–1956, American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement, widely noticed for his ‘drip technique’ of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a horizontal surface, enabling him to view and paint his canvases from all angles) to invent, in the late 1950s, a singular world independent of any trend or art movement.

Saint Phalle also collaborated with established and well-known artists such as Jasper Johns (born 1930, American painter, sculptor, draughtsman, and printmaker, variously associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and pop art; he is considered a central figure in the development of American postwar art) and Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008, American painter and graphic artist, whose early works anticipated the pop art movement, known for his Combines, 1954–1964, a group of artworks that incorporated everyday objects as art materials and that blurred the distinctions between painting and sculpture), as well as dozens of lesser-known artists and craftspersons.

In the last years of her life, Saint Phalle continued to employ her art for activism, producing a number of works addressing various contemporary issues such as global warming, a woman’s right to choose, and gun violence in the United States. Her most comprehensive work was the Tarot Garden, a large sculptural garden containing numerous works ranging up to house-sized creations.

In her final years, Saint Phalle suffered from multiple chronic health problems (emphysema, asthma, and severe arthritis) attributed to repeated exposure to airborne glass fibres and petrochemical fumes from the experimental materials she had used in her pioneering artworks, but she continued to create prolifically until the end of her life.

As her health deteriorated, she put considerable time and effort into the creation of Musée Tinguely/Museum Tinguely (in memory and honour of her long-time collaborator and earlier husband) in Basel, Switzerland. Of great importance was her 1996 donation of 55 major sculptures and over 100 graphic works by Tinguely, constituting a major part of the museum’s core collection. She also donated some of her and her husband’s artwork to create L’Espace Jean Tinguely et Niki de Saint Phalle at the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Fribourg, Switzerland.

Official recognition arrived in 2000 when Saint Phalle was awarded the Premium Imperiale award (considered to be the art world’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize) for sculpture by the Japan Art Association. On 17 November 2000, she also became an honorary citizen of Hanover, Germany (the city where, some decades earlier, her 1973 group of three huge Nanas stirred up emotions, with many Hanoverians taking a dislike to the sculptures. This grassroots protest gave rise to intense debate about art in public spaces–with a happy end: Hannoverians now consider the Nanas to be part of the family). Saint Phalle expressed her gratitude by bequeathing 300 of her works to the Sprengel Museum, Hannover.

In 2001, Saint Phalle gave 170 pieces to the MAMAC Musée d’art moderne et d’art contemporain (Museum of Modern Art and Contemporary Art) in Nice, France, as well as donating other works to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. The Sprengel Museum in Hanover, Germany, thus has the largest holdings of Niki de Saint Phalle’s work, with another major holding being kept at MAMAC in Nice, France. Saint Phalle made these generous donations, in part, to facilitate the creation of travelling exhibitions to ensure that the public would be able to see her art.

Health reasons motivated Saint Phalle to move from Paris to La Jolla, California, U.S.A., in 1994, setting up a new studio and becoming an active member of the San Diego art scene, participating in fundraisers and exhibitions there. The move wasn’t enough to save her, however, and after enduring intensive care hospitalisation for six long months, Saint Phalle died of respiratory failure (caused by emphysema) at Scripps Memorial Hospital, La Jolla, on 21 May 2002.

The Saint Phalle archives and artistic rights are held by the Niki Charitable Art Foundation (NCAF) in Santee, California (near San Diego), created by Saint Phalle and active upon her death. The NCAF maintains an online catalogue of artworks in museums and major collections. Apart from maintaining artwork and archives, the foundation also holds the intellectual property rights for them and acts as a link and point of contact for all projects related to Niki de Saint Phalle, authorising exhibitions and publications about the artist and her artwork throughout the world. The Foundation seeks to promote and enhance the public’s understanding of Saint Phalle’s artwork. It focuses on conservation stewardship and provides research assistance, authorised restoration of her works, and registration of qualifying works attributed to the artist. From its collection, the Foundation makes artwork available to museums and art centres throughout the world for exhibitions.

A majority of Saint Phalle’s sculptures are large in scale and exhibited in public places. These major works include pieces like Le Paradis Fantastique/The Fantastic Paradise, in collaboration with JeanTinguely, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1967); Hannover Nanas/Hanover Nanas, Hanover, Germany (1973); La Fontaine Stravinsky/The Stravinsky Fountain, in collaboration with Jean Tinguely, Centre Pompidou, Paris (1982); Fontaine de Château-Chinon/The Château-Chinon Fountain, in collaboration with Jean Tinguely, Château-Chinon, Nièvre, France (1988); Le Monstre du Loch Ness/The Loch Ness Monster, Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, MAMAC, Nice, France (1992); L’Ange Protecteur/The Guardian Angel, Zürich Hauptbanhof, Zürich, Switzerland (1997); Le Poète et sa Muse/The Poet and His Muse, Mingei International Museum, San Diego, California, U.S.A. (1998) and Nikigator, Mingei International Museum, San Diego, California, U.S.A. (2001).

Recent major exhibitions focusing on Niki de Saint Phalle include La Fête. Die Schenkung Niki de Saint Phalle/Celebration: The Donation of Niki de Saint Phalle, Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Germany (2000); Niki de Saint Phalle, MAMAC Musée d’art moderne et d’art contemporain (Museum of Modern Art and Contemporary Art), Nice, France (2002); Niki de Saint Phalle, Grand Palais, Galeries nationales, Paris (2014); Niki de Saint Phalle, in collaboration with la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Grand Palais, Paris and the Niki Charitable Art Foundation, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain (2015); Niki de Saint Phalle, Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj, Denmark (2016); Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life, MoMA PS1, Queens, New York, NY, U.S.A. (2021); Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s, Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, U.S.A. (2021-2022); Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, California, U.S.A. (2022) and Niki de Saint Phalle: Rebellion and Joy, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.A. (2024).

Saint Phalle is represented in, amongst other, the following collections Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna; Pinacoteca do Estate de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Musée d’Art de Joliette, Quebec, Canada; Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Aalborg, Denmark; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova Museum, Turku, Finland; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Marseille, France; Musée d’Art Contemporain, Dunkerque, France; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; MAMAC, Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice, France; Musée d’Art, Toulon, France; Musée Picasso, Antibes, France; Pinault Collection, Paris; Sprengel Museum, Hanover, Germany; Städtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim, Germany; Macedonian Center of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece; Museum JAKAN, Jakarta; Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Museum of Art, Osaka, Japan; Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Berardo Collection, Sintra, Portugal; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Espace Jean Tinguely et Niki de Saint Phalle, Fribourg, Switzerland; Fondation Pierre Giannada, Martigny, Switzerland; Konstmuseum, Luzern, Switzerland; Kunstmuseum, St. Gallen, Switzerland; Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de la Ville de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland; Musée Olympique, Lausanne, Switzerland; Museum Jean Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, United Kingdom; Tate Modern, London; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, U.S.A.; Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S.A.; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, U.S.A.; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, U.S.A.; Mingei International Museum, San Diego, California, U.S.A.; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.; National Gallery of Art (previously Corcoran Gallery), Washington, D.C.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.; New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana, U.S.A.; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, U.S.A.; The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.A.; The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, U.S.A.; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, U.S.A.; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A.; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, U.S.A. and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A.

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