Niki de Saint Phalle

Björn Springfeldt Family Collection.
Björn Springfeldt, tidigare chef för Moderna Museet (1989-96) och innan dess för Malmö Konsthall (1986-89).

Niki De Saint Phalle (1930-2002) was a self-taught French painter, sculptor, and film producer. She moved to Mallorca in 1955, and during a visit to Barcelona and Madrid, came in contact with Anotnio Gaudi’s art. This had a huge impact on her own art making and opened unforeseen possibilities for her development as an artist. In particular, it was Gaudi’s “Park Guell” which convinced her to create her own monumental sculpture park, which she bogh the land for in 1979 in Tuscany. The garden “Giardino dei Tarocchi” stood finished in 1998 and displays sculptures of icons drawn from the Tarot cad deck.
For a period, Saint Phalle explored various roles of women by creating life-sized doll-like models. They were normally dressed in white and made of papier maché. They were called Nanas and were presented in Paris in 1965. In the following year, Saint Phalle collaborated with her colleagues Jan Tinguely and Per Olof Ultvedt for a project at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, where they created the well-known sculpture exhibition “Her – A Cathedral”. This giant Nana sculpture had an entrance through its legs where one could walk inside of her. “She” awake a grand reaction across the globe. She eventually married Jean Tinguely in 1971.