Niki de Saint Phalle - Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie

The connection to far-eastern ideas of wholeness can be seen reflected in the thicken-
ing and thinning of the form, as Yin and Yang cannot grow at the same time. An in-
crease in Yin is always matched by a decrease in Yang.
Niki de Saint Phalle is known for her strong and strongly contrasting colours. She applies
colours totally in the sense of the classic “local” colour, but practically in most
cases even stricter than the Ancient Masters, as there is hardly any change of hue to
be seen within a field of colour. Azure is azure everywhere, and so is pink. Exceptions
to this rule can bee found in larger works, lessening the visual impact in favour of a
unified appearance of the whole.
Although she took, among other things, real and imagined animals for her motifs, such
as cats (Kasimir, 1991) and dragons (Dragon, 1979), most of her work deals with the
human figure. And again in the majority of works, the female figure. There is the occasional
male, like the moustached pageboy type in the serigraph “My love what are you
doing” (1969), but usually we encounter females.
The gender of her figures is determined by outline and shape, as the other features
tend to be absent or very much reduced. What they do show, however – be they females,
cats, dragons, snakes (Yin Yang, 1982), ostriches, or, in fact, architecture – is
a somewhat overall decoration deploying brightly coloured patterns: Dots and spots,
stripes and (often concentric) circles, squares and oblongs, hearts and flowers (Nana
with Yellow Dress, 1985), and stars and free irregulars.
This brightly coloured decoration is definitely not “on” the figures, in fact one has to
see the Nanas and other beings as having this pattern as their “skin colour”. The colour
scheme is not independent of the form or vice versa, which is underlined by the
fact that the natural colour of artificial resin (polyester), which Saint Phalle mostly used,
is, so to say, no colour at all, much in contrast to, say, bronze. This is also transferred
to her drawings, etchings, and serigraphs. What we see in them are not any brightly
painted figures, rather we see figures with a brightly coloured skin.
This, of course, is another instance of interpretation. The figures are deeply rooted in
fantasy, but also refer to human customs of body decoration. When, for example, a
member of an exotic tribe, like a “Huli Wigman” of Tari in the Southern Highlands
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