Niki de Saint Phalle

Niki de Saint Phalle, born in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1930 and raised in New York, was a French-Suisse painter and sculptor. During a stay in Barcelona in 1950 she was acquainted with the architecture of Antoni Gaudí, which would turn out to be crucial for her future work. Together with the sculptor Jean Tinguely, she created her famous Nana figures that received attention worldwide and were exhibited for example in New Yoek and Paris. From 1976 to 1996 Saint Phalle dedicated herself to the construction of the Tarot Garden in southern Tuscany, and finally settled in California, where she continued working on bigger projects. She died in 2002 in San Diego.