Nelson-Atkins gives Niki de Saint Phalle her final flowers in career-spanning “Rebellion and Joy”

Photo Courtesy of Bert Stern

Niki de Saint Phalle is a French-American artist who has never had a full-career museum exhibition in the United States. That is up until now.

Unfortunately, the artist’s all-encompassing stateside exhibition comes 22 years post-mortem.

“Rebellion and Joy” is scheduled to open April 27 and run through July 21. This exhibition is something that the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs William Rudolph has been incredibly excited about.

“The first time I saw her work, I was 15, about to turn 16. I was really a sulky, bratty, typical teenager,” Rudolph says. “In Paris, I ran into this amazing fountain outdoors called the Stravinsky. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before with this big, colorful, amazing fountain that mixed mirrors and stone and water, painted polyester, and things moved.”

Though it was initially the whimsy and magical qualities that drew Rudolph into de Saint Phalle’s work, his interest has become much more complex as he has grown in his knowledge of the artist.

“Nikki de Saint Phalle used her works to deal with really important issues of her time,” he says. “She was really interested in social justice. Her works offer us a way to think about how art can show our world back to ourselves, but also break through those sorts of constrictions.”

A wide range of de Saint Phalle’s work will be exhibited, from her early “Shooting” paintings to her later, “Nanas.” Everything seen within the exhibition came from the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice, France, and the Niki Charitable Art Foundation in California.

Niki de Saint Phalle was, both, a French and American citizen. She spent a good portion of her art-making years in France, though she grew up in America. Because of her American upbringing, her work is greatly influenced by American pop culture and the work of abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock.

“Her shooting paintings are an interesting combination of the pop culture that she’s grown up with and the artists that are becoming interesting,” Rudolph says. “It has another tweak to it, which has to do with a bit of rebellion. She would create these very thick canvases that had little packets of paint hidden within them. She would have herself filmed using a rifle, shooting at the painting. It was always done in public and it was always a performance.”

The public act of shooting a gun was an act of rebellion in, and of, itself, as it was quite uncanny for a woman to operate a firearm at the time. Much like the work of Pollock, the performance was equally as important as the work of de Saint Phalle.

Her “Nanas” were later works that came to fruition when she began to heavily think about the idea of women in the world. Commonly made as sculptural figures, they are made with very exaggerated anatomical features of women–figures were incredibly rounded at the hips and breasts—much the opposite of the thin model figure that was rampant in pop culture at the time.

The idea behind de Saint Phalle’s Nanas was incredibly inspired by her pregnant friend at the time. The French word, “nana,” is older slang used to mean young girl, woman, girlfriend, wife, or mistress.

“She’s really emphasizing the shape of these, but she’s also emphasizing the fact that Nanas are powerful, women are powerful,” Rudolph says.

Though de Saint Phalle grew up in an upper-middle-class family, the early stages of her life were filled with trauma and hardship and her art serves as a reflection of that.

From the playful and whimsical nature of her work to the undertones of feminism and social justice, there is truly something for everyone.

“I hope you’ll come away thinking that this is someone who lived and breathed art her entire life,” he says. “She was creative, accessible, and passionate. She created artwork that can speak to you, regardless of who you are or where you are in life. That’s an amazing gift that she gave to the public.”