French language
Official catalogue of the Niki de Saint Phalle exhibition, at the Grand Palais, Paris, from 17 September 2014 to 2 February 2015.
Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) is one of the most popular artists of the mid-20th century but paradoxically the richness and complexity of her work remains ...
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French language
Official catalogue of the Niki de Saint Phalle exhibition, at the Grand Palais, Paris, from 17 September 2014 to 2 February 2015.
Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) is one of the most popular artists of the mid-20th century but paradoxically the richness and complexity of her work remains to be discovered.
Born in France where she will spend a large part of her life but raised in the United States and choosing to spend the end of her career there, Niki de Saint Phalle is also an American artist. The only female artist of the New Realism, wife of Jean Tinguely, she was one of the first artists to become famous during her lifetime, in the early 1960s, by playing on media coverage.
She was one of the first personalities - at the same time as Warhol - to use the press and the media to control or guide the perception of her work.
Through more than 200 works and archives, many of them unpublished, we discover an artist with a singular universe, outside any trend and movement. It is imposed by its violence, its commitment and its radicality, whether it is the audacity of its performances, the political and feminist content of its work or the ambition of its achievements in the public space. But she is also the creator of the famous Nanas, happy and colourful.
Twenty years after the major retrospective devoted to it (MAMVP, 1993), this catalogue offers a re-reading of Niki de Saint Phalle's work in the light of the historical re-evaluations of recent years (history of feminism, performance, experimental cinema) but also based on work on the archives of the Niki de Saint Phalle Foundation, largely unpublished. The catalogue benefited from the close collaboration of Bloum Cardenas, Niki de Saint Phalle's granddaughter.
Interactive catalogue: some photos, indicated by a pictogram, allow you to see and hear Niki de Saint Phalle by downloading extracts from films, television or radio interviews onto a smartphone or digital tablet.
The reading of the catalogue is thus accompanied, by the animated image and sound, for a dive into the heart of the artist's universe.
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