Niki de Saint Phalle: The 1980s and 1990s, Art Running Free

Les Abattoirs, Musée—Frac Occitanie Toulouse are proud to present an exhibition dedicated to the French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002). For the first time, this exhibition will focus on the 1980s and ’90s, bringing together some two hundred artworks as well as photographs and archive material.

These two decades unfolded under the auspices of Niki de Saint Phalle’s grand adventure, the Tarot Garden in Italy. Alongside the long process of creating this monumental ensemble, a space for both art and living, she developed a whole new element to her work, enabling her to become the benefactress of her own project. Although the 1960s made Saint Phalle famous, thanks to her iconic Tirs and Nanas and even her connection with Nouveau Réalisme, the time has come to examine what has wrongly come to be seen as the “second part” of her career. Less well-known, these years are nevertheless defined by freedom, emancipation, a rich diversity of artworks, social commitment and an innovative and exemplary model of entrepreneurship. 

If independence is the word that defines the creation of the Tarot Garden, an all-encompassing artwork combining nature and habitat, begun in 1978, the 1980s and 90s were also the years spent reiterating this commitment, in particular towards the public. Throughout her career Niki de Saint Phalle strove to create works for public spaces, from the Stravinsky Fountain opposite the Centre Georges Pompidou with Jean Tinguely to Queen Califia’s Magical Circle in California. What motivated the artist was the idea of a unmediated connection with the public, outside of the traditional exhibition space of a gallery or museum. This meant that art had to be introduced on the public’s own terrain, transforming the everyday into something exceptional. By creating various pieces of furniture and jewelry, as well as silkscreens, inflatable objects, different formats of usable, portable or accessible works, and even a successful perfume launched in 1982, Niki de Saint Phalle brought art into the lives of everyone, wherever she went. 

Firmly committed to the most disadvantaged minorities, she developed early on in her life contemporary and avant-garde feminist beliefs and went on to maintain these stances with the same inclusive humanism. Her struggles include those for AIDS patients, for whom she was an early supporter, the black cause, and global warming. Defending these personal and public causes also involved a great deal of writing, including artist’s books, notably autobiographical. The freedom of speech that accompanied this vital creative work left a mark on her later years, where she accorded greater importance to words and her distinctive calligraphy, whether in drawings, silkscreens, posters or books.

This commitment towards herself, others and her art was taken from the viewpoint of freedom, inclusion and joy—“the joyful life of objects,” as the title of one of the last exhibitions held in her lifetime described it, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2001. This ambivalent joy and energy, which drove her forward and contained both sadness and happiness in one vital and freeing incantation, spilled out into the motifs and techniques that accompanied her over those decades: colorful monsters, mosaic sculptures, animals and Nanas, hearts and skulls, exploded paintings and animated films, embracing art, nature and life, as well as death. This exhibition takes the year 1978 as its starting point, just as Niki de Saint Phalle embarked on her Tarot Garden, and ends in 2002 with the death of the artist.

Curators
Lucia Pesapane and Annabelle Ténèze, assisted by Audrey Palacin

Scenography
Pascal Rodriguez

This exhibition receives the exceptional support of the City of Toulouse and Toulouse Métropole.
This exhibition has received assistance from the Niki Charitable Art Foundation, MAMAC Nice and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Paris).
The exhibition is sponsored by Deloitte and Banque Populaire Occitane.

Also at les Abattoirs
Shona Illingworth: Topologies of air
Uncertainties of Space: The latest acquisitions of the CNES Space Observatory