Niki de Saint Phalle used to refuse to be included in a book or an exhibition on women artists, worrying a superficial reading of her work would pin her to the feminine terms. She insisted that one could not and should not try to differentiate the artists by their sex, religion or nationality. However, willingly or unwillingly, she had been the ideal company for woman liberation movements in the 20th century.

In her early works where she revealed the violence and aggression by inviting audience to launch forks, and later to shoot, at the paintings. The violence is always there in the post-war epoch, there were wars in Algeria, in Vietnam, and the cold war. But there is also violence against women, and the brutality of a consumer’s society in the everyday life. Private life for Niki de Saint Phalle became the politics.

In the 1960s, Niki gave birth to the Nana which brought her international fame. These gigantic women, strong and ludique, voluminous and brightly coloured, were born out of wool, wire and papier mache, later on of polyester. In Stockholm, she had a 28-metre-long reclining Nana Hon (she) erected; together with her partner and later husband, Jean Tinguely, she produced a 15-part group of figures for the roof of the French pavilion at the World Exposition in Montreal (1967), then in the south of France she had three Nana houses built.

Quotes:

“I don’t want to be like them (her mother and aunts), the housewives, I want the world and the world belongs to men. A woman can be the queen, but only in her beehive and that’s all. The roles attributed to men and women are submitted to strict rules on both parts.”

“I was shooting at men, society and its injustice, and myself… I was totally addicted to this macabre but delightful ritual.” In another interview, she accounts the shooting experience, “It was an extraordinary experience to shoot at a painting, to see it transformed into a new creation. It was not only exciting and sexy but also tragic. It was like witnessing a birth and a death at the same time.”

“I abandoned the painting and used gouache and gloss paint; I bought some toys and some other objects that I found from the flea markets. Most of them are the violent objects, such as hammers, knives, fusils. Sometimes I used other used objects, such as shoes. It was funny, very exciting.”

In an interview in 1965 for Vogue magazine, Niki talked about “art and guys” with Maurice Rheims.

“If today I considered myself to be the last poet, the only sculptor capable of creating something poetic, it was just because I am a woman. The guys have their fusils, their atomic booms and all the dirty things that they have done are dragging us… They are sterilized. All that left in them is either the head or the appearance. That was why today they are incapable of creating, continuing to create something new in the art world. And that was also why today, I, as a woman, je can really create a poetic work. Men has nothing left to express, if not a profound jealous towards the women, towards their own creator. A woman can give life but not a man. Men are imprisoned in stupid things… money, power, medal, whereas me, as a woman, I enjoy a fantastic liberty to express my delirium, my own problems confronting the world today.”