528 - Niki de Saint Phalle* (Neuilly-sur-Seine 1930 - 2002 San Diego)

Niki de Saint Phalle* (Neuilly-sur-Seine 1930 - 2002 San Diego) The Toys color lithography/paper 75 x 56 cm signed Niki de St. Phalle, inscribed HC numbered 25/30 SCHÄTZPREIS / ESTIMATE € 600 - 800 STARTPREIS / STARTING PRICE € 600 Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle, known as Niki de Saint Phalle, later revealed that she had been sexually abused by her father for several years, starting at the age of eleven. Her art became a means of personal processing. Having grown up in New York, she returned to France in 1952 and emerged as a key artist of European post-war modernism. In 1961, alongside her future husband Jean Tinguely as well as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, she participated in John Cage’s Variations II at the American Embassy in Paris. Tinguely became her most important artistic partner. Saint Phalle moved within the circle of Nouveau Réalisme (New Realism), a movement theorized by Pierre Restany; artists such as Yves Klein, Arman, César, Christo, and Jacques de la Villeglé represent this expanded realm of object, action, and public art. Beginning in 1965, she created the Nanas—voluptuous female figures made of wire, fabric, and later, polyester. These works exist within the context of feminist and body-oriented art, similar to the approaches developed in various ways by Louise Bourgeois, Yayoi Kusama, and VALIE EXPORT. In 1966, Saint Phalle created *Hon* at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm—a 29-meter-long Nana that visitors could walk inside, combining audience participation, sculpture, and spatial art. In 1979, she began work on the Giardino dei Tarocchi (Tarot Garden) in Capalbio, which opened in 1998. Clad in ceramic and mirror mosaics, the site reflects influences from Antoni Gaudí, Jean Dubuffet, and Jackson Pollock. Starting in 1982, she collaborated with Tinguely to design the Stravinsky Fountain in front of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 1999, she undertook the design of the grottoes in Hanover-Herrenhausen. She was awarded the Praemium Imperiale in 2000. PLEASE NOTE: The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights and platform fee. In the case of normal taxation (marked ° at the estimate), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax is added to the sum of the highest bid, the buyer's premium and platform fee. This amounts to 13% for paintings, drawings, graphic works and sculptures and 20% for photographs and all other items. The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.