Niki de Saint Phalle
France
1 Works exhibited on Kooness
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Works by Niki de Saint Phalle
Niki de Saint Phalle was a French artist best known for her sculptural female figures known as Nanas. Colorful, patterned, and crafted in a variety of shapes and sizes, these sculpted women embody the feminist spirit of de Saint Phalle’s work. Born Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle on October 29, 1930 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, the self-taught artist first began making art as a form of therapy. Realized over two decades, de Saint Phalle’s Il Giardino dei Tarocchi (The Tarot Garden) was filled with 22 of her signature monuments and is located in Tuscany. “It's my destiny to make a place where people can come and be happy: a garden of joy,” she once mused. The artist died on May 21, 2002 in La Jolla, CA at the age of 71. Today, her works are held in the collections of 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, among others.
Niki is born Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle on October 29, 1930 in France. Her father is French, her mother American. She is the second of five children of a wealthy family who lose their business and fortune in the stock market collapse.
She spends most of her childhood and adolescence in New York City, though strong ties are maintained with the family in France through frequent visits. As a teenager, in an early display of her later artistic temperament, she paints the fig leaves of her convent school’s classical sculptures red. She transfers to a new school shortly thereafter.
As a young woman, Niki’s first career is as a fashion model, with photographs appearing in Vogue and Life. At 18, she elopes with childhood friend Harry Mathews.