From 8 March to 6 April, Opera Gallery Hong Kong will showcase artworks by French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle in the exhibition Garden of Joy. On this occasion, let’s retrace the self-taught artist’s journey from a traumatic childhood to becoming one of the few female monumental sculptors, as well as painter and filmmaker, at the forefront of feminism.

Born Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle in 1930, Saint Phalle grew up in a strict Catholic environment, between a violent mother and an abusive father – sexual abuse which she would only reveal at 64 years old in her book Mon Secret (My Secret) in 1994. Her traumatic childhood would define and highly influence her art practice and social commitment.

In 1949, at the age of 18, Saint Phalle became a fashion model starring on the covers of Vogue, Elle, Life and Harper’s Bazaar. That same year, she married Harry Matthews, who would later become writer. Rejecting the conservative values of her family, she lived a bohemian and unconventional life between the US and France with her husband and their two children.

In 1953, at just 22, after several manic episodes and nervous breakdowns, she was sent to a psychiatric hospital where she received memory-altering electroshock treatments. Encouraged by psychiatrists to create art to help her overcoming her mental trauma, she starting to devote herself to painting and sculpture in her experimental and self-taught style.

Jean Tinguely and Nikki de Saint Phalle

Her first art exhibition was held in 1956 in Switzerland, where she displayed her naïve style of oil painting. That same year, she met Swiss artist Jean Tinguely, known for his kinetic sculptures made from cast-off mechanisms and junk, and she created with him her first large-scale sculpture.

After discovering avant-garde artists Yves Klein, Marcel Duchamp, Willem de Kooning or Robert Rauschenberg in 1959, Saint Phalle switched from oil painting to gouaches and gloss paint, and began to produce assemblages from household objects and castoffs.

After separated from her husband in 1960, she moved in with Jean Tinguely, starting an unconventional love relationship that would last for over a decade, as well as fruitful artistic collaboration until Tinguely’s death in 1991. Saint Phalle became part of the Nouveau Réalisme movement along with Tinguely, Yves Klein or Arman. She was the only woman in the group.

Niki de Saint Phalle creating “Pirodactyl over New York” (1962)

Saint Phalle started to receive worldwide attention with her angry and violent assemblages of toys, tools, bicycle wheels, clothing, chicken wire and plaster embedded with paint-filled plastic bags shot by firearms (Les Tirs), creating emotionally-charged explosions of colour. Les Tirs series provided her with a vital outlet for her inner demons, a way to shoot at her father, herself and society.

Combining performance, body art, sculpture, and painting, Saint Phalle began to showcase her unique creative process in art museums and galleries worldwide, as well as staging public happenings where other artists would also pull the trigger, which launched her among avant-garde artistic rebellion.

Saint Phalle next explored a subject close to her heart and resonating with her personal life, the various roles of women. She developed her best-known and most prolific series of sculptures, the Nanas, life-size dolls of women, such as brides and mothers giving birth, monsters, and large heads. Initially made of soft materials like wool, cloth and papier-mâché, they soon evolved into plaster over a wire framework and plastic toys.

Niki de Saint Phalle, Hon, 1966, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden – Archdaily

Over time, these figures became more joyful, whimsical, colourful, and larger in scale, a way for Saint Phalle to portray archetypal female figures with a more optimistic view of the position of women in society. Criticising traditional feminine values in a less angry manner, her art became an ode to femininity, in sensual and empowering ways, championing the female body and female sexuality.

Not only was Saint Phalle committed to women’s rights, but, through her entire life and career, she was also dedicated to fight racial segregation and social injustices, as well as an early advocate for HIV/AIDS education. Her books were written and brightly-coloured in an apparent childish style, but it was her way to address controversial and global problems, in the bold way children often question and call out incomprehensible and unacceptable situations.

Le Jardin des Tarots created by Niki de Saint Phalle, Capalbio, Italy

Between 1979 and 1993, Saint Phalle created her own sculpture park, Le Jardin des Tarots in Capalbio, Italy, inspired by Gaudi’s Parc Güell in Barcelona, as well as the Palais Idéal by Ferdinand Cheval. Her monumental structures with huge ceramic, mosaic and glass figures were inspired by the twenty-two esoteric tarot cards. Some of the larger sculptures are up to fifteen metres high and can be walked through. Saint Phalle even lived inside one for several years during the construction.

For years, Saint Phalle worked with various toxic materials on a daily basis, as well as inhaled polyester dust from her sculptures. As a consequence, she suffered from inflamed lungs and died from respiratory failure in 2002 at the age of 71.

Saint Phalle once said “I became an artist because I had no choice. I embraced art as my deliverance and a necessity”. In a tragic twist of fate, her art saved her and also killed her.

Nikki de Saint Phalle, Ange vase, 1993, Opera Gallery