Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s

- Blurb -

A timely reassessment of the artist' s early performances and feminist sculptures, affirming their radical engagements and art historical significance This volume is a focused look at two bodies of work, the Tirs ("shooting paintings") and Nanas ("dames"), in the experimental 1960s practice of the French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002). Alongside a poetic response to the work, four essays treat Saint Phalle' s oeuvre as works of radical performance and feminist art, as well as highlighting her transatlantic projects and collaborations. A chronology with photo-documentation and known participants details for the first time all Tirs shooting events in Europe and the United States, and another timeline recaps Saint Phalle' s life in the 1960s. Tirs were made by firing a . 22 caliber rifle at the surfaces of paintings. The bullets pierced bags of pigment, aerosol paint cans, or even food embedded in dense assemblages covered in painted plaster. Saint Phalle' s increasingly liberated female figures with outstretched arms, curvaceous forms, and powerful poses developed into her well-known Nanas, an evolution contemporaneous with the rise of a Euro-American feminist movement.