Niki de Saint Phalle

Innovative and pioneering, French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) created an extensive and complex body of work over her five decade long career. Her work received international recognition as early as 1961 when her work was included in the important exhibition ‘The Art and Assemblage’ at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since then Saint Phalle has been the subject of numerous exhibitions worldwide. Her bright and joyful Nana sculptures have become known as her signature artwork. The artist and her oeuvre however, cannot be solely understood through this one body of work. This catalogue, accompanying the artist’s first comprehensive retrospective in Belgium at Beaux-Arts Mons (BAM), explores Saint Phalle’s multi-faceted practice, examining how the artist worked across a wide-range of media – painting, assemblage, sculpture, performance, public sculpture and architectural projects, film and theatre. Providing an overview of Saint Phalle’s entire career, it seeks to demonstrate how the artist used her boundless imagination and unique vision of the world to transcend the space typically reserved for women to become one of the twentieth century’s most important artists.

The title – “Here Everything is Possible” – is a statement made by Saint Phalle about her monumental sculpture park: The Tarot Garden in Tuscany, Italy. It should however, be read as a testimony to the artist’s attitude to her entire artistic process – one of limitless possibility. This extensive, fully illustrated, catalogue includes new scholarly texts by Catherine Francblin, Alison Gingeras, Denis Laoureux, Camille Morineau, Kyla McDonald and Xavier Roland. The essays are accompanied by interviews with Daniel Abadie and Marcelo Zitelli, who both worked closely with the artist during her lifetime, and an illustrated biography.