Niki de Saint Phalle

Niki de Saint Phalle was born in France in 1930, and raised in New York. Married and a mother of two by her early twenties, de Saint Phalle rejected her American bourgeois upbringing and instead lived a bohemian lifestyle in France and Spain. When her marriage proved tumultuous and parenting challenging, de Saint Phalle turned to painting as a therapeutic outlet. In the late fities, de Saint Phalle met Swiss artist Jean Tinguely who encouraged her artistic experimentation. By 1960, de Saint Phalle’s marriage had ended, and she was living with Tinguely. Often collaborating with Jasper Johns, she began creating her "tirs" or "shots" paintings. The dynamic works consisted of various collage elements and, crucially, a paint-filled target to be shot by de Saint Phalle. In the early sixties, de Saint Phalle began exploring alternative expressions of the female form. Initially made of textiles or paper mache, the early “Nanas” were eccentric representations of women: ghostly brides and birthing mothers with oversized features, intended to draw attention to the restrictive nature of gendered societal roles. As the scale of the Nanas grew, the figures became more colourful and whimsical, eventually taking on playfully voluptuous forms. Over the following decades, de Saint Phalle would create dozens of monumental Nanas for various public spaces. “California Nana,” created in 2000, represents a confident realization of de Saint Phalle’s bold, exuberant and humorous style. De Saint Phalle moved to La Jolla in southern California in 1994, and continued to experiment with new media and forms until her passing in 2002. De Saint Phalle's works are held in numerous collections worldwide, including the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Musée d’Art Moderne d’Art Contemporain in Nice.