Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002)
A hell of a girl!
Born in France in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Niki grew up quickly in New York in the wealthy family of Saint Phalle bankers. Niki had a difficult childhood, which is why she escaped to a dream and story world like those her grandmother read to her in France. This painful childhood will always leave her with traces which, as an adult, she will seek to free herself from, art will then be her remedy. She begins by painting in oil canvases on which she encrusts some small objects (pearls, lids, pieces of wood …) taking up this universe both magical and dark. In 1960 she left her family to devote herself to her artistic career and caused a scandal in 1961 with her series of shots. She creates a relief work by incorporating new objects and bags of colored paint and covers it all with plaster. She then brings out the color by shooting the bags with a rifle. The painting then begins to flow, to bleed and by this gesture Niki exorcises her hatred against war, her lover and his family. The series of Shots will be worth to Niki to be invited to join the group of New Realists in 1961. However it is thanks to these Nanas with round shapes (recalling the pregnancy of her friend and muse Clarisse Rivers) that Niki meets success with from 1962, with this vision of the liberated and fulfilled woman. Niki made many Nanas, but the most impressive was the Hon, which she created in 1966 in Sweden with Jean Tinguely, 6.10 meters high and 26.70 meters long. With Tinguely, a member of the New Realists whom she married in 1971, she created monumental works like the Cyclops of Milly-la-Forêt or the Stravinsky fountain in Paris, bringing her shapes and bright colors, her science of mechanics.
