Her sensual Nanas—buxom, colorful female figures— laid the foundation for her international success beyond the art world: Niki de Saint Phalle. But the self-taught artist’s creative spectrum is much broader, and her unconventional oeuvre, ranging from painting and drawing to assemblages, performances, theater, film, and architecture, is more subversive and critical of society than is widely assumed. Based on her efforts to process her own feelings, she addressed social and political issues, critically questioning institutions and role models in ways that are as relevant today as they have ever been. The exhibition and the publication shed new light on the artist’s exceptional personality and uncover the wide-ranging oeuvre of the popular outsider—that is always surprising and eccentric, emotional, dark and brutal, humorous and cheerful.

NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE (1930–2002) is one of the most important artists and sculptors of her generation. Growing up in Paris and New York, she returned to Paris in the 1950s, where she began her artistic career with her legendary Tirs, her "shooting" series, created during provocative performances.