Niki de Saint Phalle - Samuelis Baumgarte Galerie

for an exhibition in Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, the world famous “Stravinsky Foun-
tain” at the foot of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the legendary “Tarot Garden”
in Capalbio.
To Saint Phalle the “Tarot Garden” represented the realization of a long-cherished
dream that she initiated in 1979. Inspired by the architecture of the Catalan artist
Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926), Niki de Saint Phalle, with an Italian team, built the 22
figures of the Tarot playing cards as gigantic sculptures and set them down in the
Tuscan landscape. Since completion in 1998, the publicly accessible garden radiates
a fascinating mystique with its organic forms and shimmering mosaic art, whereby
the formal vocabulary is not only an homage to Gaudí, but also to the principle of a
Gesamtkunstwerk. Thus Saint Phalle did not just design every detail inside the edifice
herself, she even used the “interior” of a figure as living space, which she ultimately
made into an element of her own inventiveness. Art to Niki de Saint Phalle was not
only an expression of passion, imagination and ambition, but also the embodiment of
a refuge, just as the artist’s dwelling in the Tarot Garden mimes the sanctuary of a
mother’s womb.
With this unique artist, even death is linked directly to her creativity, for she died at
71 of an incurable lung disease caused by her allergy to polyester: the material that
represented her greatest fascination and also projected her onto the world stage.
Jacqueline Höhne M.A.
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