Niki de Saint Phalle

NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE (Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, 1930 - San Diego, California, 2002).
Untitled.
Lithograph on paper. Exemplary 52/99.
Measurements: 51 x 67 cm; 73 x 95 cm (frame).
Niki de Saint Phalle was one of the most renowned artists of the mid-twentieth century. She participated around 1962 in the exhibition "The Art of Assembly" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1964 she began to create a series of works entitled "Nanas", which consisted of female figures with voluptuous forms and vivid colors. These sculptures show a contrast between the playful or festive dimension of the object and a much more tragic, violent and pornographic one. These images contrast with the conventional canon of feminine beauty. In the early 1960s, the artist created the Shooting 'Paintings. These works were polyethylene bags filled with paint in the shape of a human figure covered with white chalk. The image was created after shooting the figure out of bags of paint. It was in 1966 when he made the largest sculpture of a woman's body in the history of art, which was also part of the series "Nanas" and whose title was "Hon" ("She" in Swedish). A Nana that ceases to be sculpture and becomes architecture. It was installed in the Moderna Musset in Stockholm, under secrecy because it was a rather revolutionary act considering the time in which he made it, so a few days after opening it to the public, they closed the exhibition. In 1979 he began to build a sculpture park, "El jardín del tarot" in Spanish, located near Capalbio, Italy. In 1982, together with her husband Jean Tinguely, she built the "Fontaine Stravinsky" or Fountain of the Automatons, located next to the Pompidou Center in Paris. Many of Saint Phalle's sculptures have large dimensions and are exhibited in public spaces. The Niki Charitable Art Foundation maintains an online map and catalog of all its existing public artworks. Le Paradis Fantastique (The Fantastic Paradise, 1967), Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Switzerland (in collaboration with Tinguely). Golem (1971), Kiryat Hayovel, Jerusalem. Hannover Nanas (1973), together with Leibnizufer in Hannover, Germany. La Fontaine Stravinsky (Stravinsky Fountain or Fontaine des automates, 1982) near the Pompidou Center, Paris (in collaboration with Tinguely) Sun God (1983), a fantastic winged creature next to the University of California, San Diego Faculty Club as part of the Stuart Collection of public art.