Niki de Saint Phalle - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Niki de Saint Phalle, born Catherine-Marie-Agnès-Brandon Fal de Saint Phalle (29 October 193021 May 2002) was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

sculptor

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

, painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, and film maker.

The early years

Niki de Saint Phalle was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine

Neuilly-sur-Seine

Neuilly-sur-Seine is a commune in the western suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.Although Neuilly is technically a suburb of Paris, it is immediately adjacent to the city and directly extends it. The area is composed of mostly wealthy, select residential...

, Hauts-de-Seine

Hauts-de-Seine

Hauts-de-Seine is designated number 92 of the 101 départements in France. It is part of the Île-de-France region, and covers the western inner suburbs of Paris...

, near Paris, to Count André-Marie Fal de Saint Phalle (1906-1987), a French banker, and his American wife, the former Jeanne Jacqueline Harper (1908-1980). She had four siblings, and a double first cousin was French novelist Thérèse de Saint Phalle (Baroness Jehan de Drouas). After being wiped out financially during the Great Depression, the family moved from France to the United States in 1933, where her father worked as manager of the American branch of the Saint Phalle family's bank. Saint Phalle enrolled at the prestigious Brearley School

Brearley School

The Brearley School is an all-girls private school in New York City, New York, United States. It is located on the Upper East Side of the Manhattan borough of New York City. The school is divided into the Lower School , Middle School and Upper School...

in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, but she was dismissed for painting fig leaves red on the school's statuary. She went on to attend Oldfields School

Oldfields School

Oldfields School, founded in Baltimore County, Maryland in 1867 by Anna Austen McCulloch, is the oldest girls' boarding school in Maryland.A college preparatory boarding and day school for girls in grades 6 through 12 located in Glencoe, near Sparks, Maryland, Oldfield's School has approximately...

in Glencoe, Maryland

Glencoe, Maryland

Glencoe is an unincorporated community in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. Glencoe was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983....

where she graduated in 1947. During her teenaged years, Saint Phalle was a fashion model; at the age of sixteen, she appeared on the cover of Life magazine (September 26, 1949), and, three years later, on the November 1952 cover of French Vogue
Vogue Paris
The French edition of Vogue magazine, Vogue Paris, is a fashion magazine that has been published since 1920.-1920–1954:The French edition of Vogue was first issued on June 15, 1920. More information about French Vogue in the 1920s is available in Mary E. Davis's book Classic Chic: Music, Fashion,...

.
At eighteen, Saint Phalle eloped with author Harry Mathews

Harry Mathews

Harry Mathews is an American author of various novels, volumes of poetry and short fiction, and essays.-Life:Born in New York City to an upper class family, Mathews was educated at private schools there and at the Groton School in Massachusetts before enrolling at Princeton University in 1947...

, whom she had known since the age of twelve, and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

. While her husband studied music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

, Saint Phalle began to paint, experimenting with different media and styles. Their first child, Laura

Laura Duke Condominas

Laura Duke Condominas, also known as Laura Duke, born Boston April 1951, is the daughter of French artist and film-maker Niki de Saint-Phalle and American novelist Harry Mathews. As an actress she is most notable for her portrayal of Guinevere in Robert Bresson's film Lancelot du lac of 1974.She...

, was born in April 1951.

Saint Phalle rejected the staid, conservative values of her family, which dictated domestic positions for wives and particular rules of conduct. Poet John Ashbery recalled that Saint Phalle's artistic pursuits were rejected by members of Saint Phalle clan: her uncle "French banker Count Alexandre de Saint-Phalle, ... reportedly takes a dim view of her artistic activities," Ashbery observed. However, after marrying young and becoming a mother, she found herself living the same bourgeois lifestyle that she had attempted to reject; the internal conflict caused her to suffer a nervous breakdown. As a form of therapy, she was urged to pursue her painting.

While in Paris on a modeling assignment, Saint Phalle was introduced to the American painter, Hugh Weiss, who became both her friend and mentor. He encouraged her to continue painting in her self-taught style.

She subsequently moved to Deià

Deià

Deià is a small coastal village on the northern ridge of the Spanish island of Majorca. It is located about ten miles north of Valldemossa, and it is known for its literary and musical residents...

, Majorca, Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, where her son, Philip, was born in May 1955. While in Spain, Saint Phalle read the works of Proust and visited Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

and Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

, where she became deeply affected by the work of Antonio Gaudí. Gaudí's influence opened many previously unimagined possibilities for Saint Phalle, especially with regard to the use of unusual materials and objets-trouvés as structural elements in sculpture and architecture. Saint Phalle was particularly struck by Gaudí's "Park Güell

Park Güell

Park Güell is a garden complex with architectural elements situated on the hill of El Carmel in the Gràcia district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It was designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí and built in the years 1900 to 1914...

" which persuaded her to create one day her own garden-based artwork that would combine both art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

istic and natural

Nature

Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...

elements.

Saint Phalle continued to paint, particularly after she and her family moved to Paris in the mid-1950s. Her first art exhibition was held in 1956 in Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, where she displayed her naïve style

Naïve art

Naïve art is a classification of art that is often characterized by a childlike simplicity in its subject matter and technique. While many naïve artists appear, from their works, to have little or no formal art training, this is often not true...

of oil painting. She then took up collage

Collage

A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....

work that often featured images of the instruments of violence, such as guns and knives.

In the late 1950's, Saint Phalle was ill with hyperthyroidism

Hyperthyroidism

Hyperthyroidism is the term for overactive tissue within the thyroid gland causing an overproduction of thyroid hormones . Hyperthyroidism is thus a cause of thyrotoxicosis, the clinical condition of increased thyroid hormones in the blood. Hyperthyroidism and thyrotoxicosis are not synonymous...

which was eventually treated by an operation in 1958. Sometime during the early 1960s, she left her first husband.

Nanas

After the "Shooting paintings" came a period when she explored the various roles of women. She made life size dolls of women, such as brides and mothers giving birth. They were usually dressed in white. They were primarily made of polyester with a wire framework. They were generally created from papier mâché.

Inspired by the pregnancy of her friend Clarice Rivers, the wife of American artist Larry Rivers

Larry Rivers

Larry Rivers was an American artist, musician, filmmaker and occasional actor. Rivers resided and maintained studios in New York City, Southampton, New York and Zihuatanejo, Mexico.-Biography:...

, she began to use her artwork to consider archetypal female figures in relation to her thinking on the position of women in society. Her artistic expression of the proverbial everywoman were named 'Nanas'. The first of these freely posed forms—made of papier-mâché, yarn, and cloth—were exhibited at the Alexander Iolas

Alexander Iolas

Alexander Iolas or Alexandre Iolas was a Greek - American gallerist and collector....

Gallery in Paris in September 1965. For this show, Iolas published her first artist book that includes her handwritten words in combination with her drawings of 'Bananas'. Encouraged by Iolas, she started a highly productive output of graphic work that accompanied exhibitions that included posters, books, and writings.

In 1966, Saint Phalle collaborated with fellow artist Jean Tinguely

Jean Tinguely

Jean Tinguely was a Swiss painter and sculptor. He is best known for his sculptural machines or kinetic art, in the Dada tradition; known officially as metamechanics...

and Per Olof Ultvedt on a large-scale sculpture installation, "hon-en katedral" ("she-a cathedral") for Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

, Sweden. The outer form of "hon" is a giant, reclining 'Nana', whose internal environment is entered from between her legs. The piece elicited immense public reaction in magazines and newspapers throughout the world. The interactive quality of the "hon" combined with a continued fascination with fantastic types of architecture intensifies her resolve to see her own architectural dreams realized. During the construction of the "hon-en katedral," she met Swiss

Switzerland

artist Rico Weber, who became an important assistant and collaborator for both de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely. During the 1960s, she also designed decors and costumes for two theatrical productions: a ballet by Roland Petit

Roland Petit

Roland Petit was a French choreographer and dancer born in Villemomble, near Paris, France. He trained at the Paris Opéra Ballet school, and became well known for his creative ballets.-Biography:...

, and an adaptation of the Aristophanes

Aristophanes

Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...

play "Lysistrata

Lysistrata

Lysistrata is one of eleven surviving plays written by Aristophanes. Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC, it is a comic account of one woman's extraordinary mission to end The Peloponnesian War...

."

In 1971, de Saint Phalle and Tinguely married.

The Tarot Garden

Influenced by Gaudí´s Parc Güell in Barcelona, and the garden in Bomarzo

Bomarzo

Bomarzo is a town and comune of the province of Viterbo , in the lower valley of the Tiber. It is located 14.5 km ENE of Viterbo and 68 km NNW of Rome.-History:...

, Saint Phalle decided that she wanted to make something similar; a monumental sculpture park created by a woman. In 1979, she acquired some land in Garavicchio, Tuscany

Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....

, about 100 km north-west of Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

along the coast. The garden, called Giardino dei Tarocchi
Giardino dei Tarocchi
Il Giardino dei Tarocchi or The Garden of Tarot is a sculpture garden based on the esoteric tarot created by Niki de Saint Phalle in Garavicchio, province of Grosseto, Tuscany, during the late 1970s.-External links:*...

in Italian, contains sculptures of the symbols found on Tarot

Tarot

The tarot |trionfi]] and later as tarocchi, tarock, and others) is a pack of cards , used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play a group of card games such as Italian tarocchini and French tarot...

cards. The garden took many years, and a considerable sum of money, to complete. It opened in 1998, after more than 20 years of work.

Public works

On 17 November 2000 the artist became an honorary citizen of Hannover, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, and donated 300 pieces of her artwork to the Sprengel Museum

Sprengel Museum

The Sprengel Museum in Hanover houses one of the most significant collections of modern art in Germany. It is located in a building designed by Peter and Ursula Trint and Dieter Quast , adjacent to the Maschsee...

.

Many of Niki de Saint Phalle's sculptures are large and some of them are exhibited in public places, including:

Miles Davis statue outside of Hotel Negresco in Nice, France.
Stravinsky Fountain
Stravinsky Fountain
The Stravinsky Fountain is a whimsical public fountain ornamented with sixteen works of sculpture, moving and spraying water, representing the works of composer Igor Stravinsky...

(or Fontaine des automates) near the Centre Pompidou, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

(1982)—also featuring works of Jean Tinguely
La fountaine Château-Chinon, at Château-Chinon
Château-Chinon
Château-Chinon is the name of two communes of the Nièvre département, in France:* Château-Chinon * Château-Chinon The two towns are neighboring each other. They were separated during the French Revolution....

, Nièvre
Nièvre
Nièvre is a department in the centre of France named after the Nièvre River.-History:Nièvre is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...

. Collaboration with Jean Tinguely
L'Ange Protecteur in the Hall of the Zürich Train Station
Nanas, along the Leibnizufer in Hannover (1974).
Queen Califia's Magic Circle, a sculpture garden in Kit Carson Park, Escondido, California
Sun God
Sun God (statue)
Sun God is a statue by French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle located on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. The statue is a 14-foot multicolored bird-like creature, perched atop a 15-foot-tall horseshoe-shaped rock pedestal....

(1983), a fanciful winged creature next to the Faculty Club on the campus of the University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...

as a part of the Stuart Collection
Stuart Collection
The Stuart Collection is a collection of public art on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. Founded in 1983, the Stuart Collection's goal is to spread commissioned sculpture throughout the campus, including both traditional sculptures and integration with features of the campus...

of public art.
La Lune, A sculpture located inside the Brea Mall
Brea Mall
The Brea Mall is a shopping mall located in the Orange County city of Brea, California. Since 1998 the mall has been owned and operated by the Simon Property Group. It is home to four major department stores, over 175 specialty shops and boutiques, and a food court. It is approximately 1,310,000...

in Brea, California
Brea, California
Brea is a city in Orange County, California. The population, as of the 2010 Census was 39,282.The city began as a center of crude oil production, was later propelled by citrus production, and is now an important retail center because of the large Brea Mall and the recently redeveloped Brea Downtown...

.
Nikigator, A sculpture on The Prado, Balboa Park in San Diego, California.
#19 Baseball Player, a sculpture on loan to The San Diego Hall of Champions, Balboa Park, San Diego
Coming Together, San Diego convention center
Grotto at the Royal Herrenhäuser Gardens in Hannover, Germany
Cyclop in Milly-La-Forêt, France—collaborative monumental sculpture with Jean Tinguely, a.o.
Golem in Jerusalem
Noah's Ark collaborative sculpture park with Swiss architect Mario Botta
Mario Botta
Mario Botta is a Swiss architect. He studied at the Liceo Artistico in Milan and the IUAV in Venice. His ideas were influenced by Le Corbusier, Carlo Scarpa, Louis Kahn. He opened his own practice in 1970 in Lugano.-Career:...

at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo
Lebensretter-Brunnen / Lifesaver Fountain in Duisburg, Germany
l’Oiseau de Feu Sur l’Arch / Firebird (literally, “Bird of Fire on an Arch”), in Bechtler Plaza
Bechtler Museum of Modern Art
The Bechtler Museum of Modern Art in Charlotte, North Carolina is a 36,500 sq. ft. museum space dedicated to the exhibition of mid-20th-century modern art...

in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Miss Black Power in the Hakone Open-Air Museum
Hakone Open-Air Museum
Hakone Open-Air Museum is a museum in Hakone in Ashigarashimo District, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.-External links:*...

in Hakone, Japan
La Tempérance (1992) in Centre Hamilius, Luxembourg-Ville
Luxembourg (city)
The city of Luxembourg , also known as Luxembourg City , is a commune with city status, and the capital of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. It is located at the confluence of the Alzette and Pétrusse Rivers in southern Luxembourg...

, Luxembourg.

Literature

Niki de Saint Phalle, Pontus Hultén
Pontus Hultén
Karl Gunnar Vougt Pontus Hultén was a Swedish art collector and museum director. Pontus Hultén is regarded as one of the most distinguished museum professionals of the twentieth century...

, ISBN 3-7757-0582-1. Published in connection with an exhibition in Bonn
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
Traces: An Autobiography Remembering 1930 – 1949, Niki de Saint Phalle, ISBN 2-940033-43-9
Harry & Me. The Family Years, Niki de Saint Phalle, ISBN 371651442X
Niki de Saint Phalle: Catalogue Raisonné: 1949 – 2000, Janica Parente a.o., ISBN 2-940033-48-X
Niki De Saint Phalle: Monographie/Monograph, Michel de Grece a.o., ISBN 2-940033-63-3
Niki's World: Niki De Saint Phalle, Ulrich Krempel, ISBN 3-7913-3068-3
Niki de Saint Phalle. My art, my dreams, Carla Schultz-Hoffmann (Editor), ISBN 3-7913-2876-X
AIDS: You can’t catch it holding hands, Niki de Saint Phalle, ISBN 0-932499-52-X
Niki de Saint Phalle: Insider-Outsider. World Inspired Art, Niki de Saint Phalle, Martha Longenecker (Editor), ISBN 0-914155-10-5
Niki De Saint Phalle: The Tarot Garden, Anna Mazzanti, ISBN 88-8158-167-1
Niki de Saint Phalle: La Grotte, ISBN 3-7757-1276-3
Jo Applin, "Alberto Burri and Niki de Saint Phalle: Relief Sculpture and Violence in the Sixties', Source: Notes in the History of Art, Winter 2008

Film

Daddy, 1973, written and directed by Saint Phalle and Peter Lorrimer Whitehead.
Un rêve plus long que la nuit, 1971, written and directed by Saint Phalle.
Who is the monster - You or me?, 1995, by Peter Schamoni in collaboration with Saint Phalle.

External links

Official site
Official site of the artist's foundation, NCAF
FemBiography Niki de Saint Phalle
Niki Museum - Nasu, Japan
Niki de Saint Phalle: Queen Califia - sculpture park in Escondido, California
Fountain at Château-Chinon
Stuart Collection, UCSD
Niki in Artfacts
The Tarot Garden
The Mosaics of Niki de Saint Phalle
Nike de Saint Phalle at JGM Galerie
Guardian Angel - Zürich Hauptbahnhof
Niki de Saint Phalle shop
Niki works at Gallery Delaive
The Tarot Garden - Giardino dei Tarocchi Feature Article

Tir, exhibit at elles@centrepompidou, Paris, film about Tir, on the elles@centrepompidou's website

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