The path to becoming an artist was not an easy one for Catherine Marie-Agn's Fal de Saint Phalle. She had many personal obstacles to overcome, but she was able to do this and make a personal statement with her artwork that is a lasting tribute. She has been called an Outsider Artist, because she didn't receive formal training.
       The term Outsider Art may no longer be relevant because it implies an 'insider art,' that everyone agrees on, something that is less true now than at another time.Niki de Saint Phalle was self educated but she also learned from sophisticated artists she associated with. She met many of the Surrealists in Paris, such as Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, and Salvador Dali. She came to know the American painter, Hugh Weiss, who encouraged her personal style of painting. Her marriage to the talented Swiss artist, Jean Tinguely (pictured below right), was of great importance to her development. It would be difficult to see her as an Outsider Artist, and more accurately she would be described as a Symbolist and Surrealist, with Pop Art influence.

When she was 18 years old, she married Harry Mathews and moves with him to Cambridge, Massachusetts. While her husband studied music at Harvard University, Niki began to paint and experiment with various materials. In addition to this, from 1948 until about 1955, she also worked as a fashion model for "Vogue", "Life", "Harper's Bazaar", "Elle" and other French and American magazines.
        In 1951, her daughter Laura was born. A few years later, the family moved to Paris, where Niki studied theatre science. Her husband continued his music studies and later becomes a writer. In 1953, Niki suffered from a nervous breakdown in Nice and was treated in a hospital - with electroshocks and psychiatric drugs. This personal catastrophe was an occasion for Niki to rethink her life's plans and liberate herself.
        In Paris, Niki met not only the Swiss artist couple Eva Aeppli and Jean Tinguely, but also the American painter Hugh Weiss, who encouraged her to remain true to her autodidactic painting style. Niki moved with her family to Deya, Majorca, where her son Philip was born in 1955. In 1956, she had her first solo exhibition in St. Gallen with plaster reliefs and material assemblages. She divorced Harry Mathews in 1960.
        Niki lived and worked from this time on together with Jean Tinguely. Tinguely and Saint Phalle were married in 1971 and separated only two short years later in 1973. The couple never divorced but remained good friends and collaborated on many sculpture projects. Saint Phalle has described her husband as "my love, my work partner and also my rival." Though the couple collaborated together she felt in competition with him for most of her career.
        In Paris in 1962 de Saint Phalle exhibited ten works at a one-woman exhibition at Galerie Rive Droite. Among the visitors was Alexander Iolas, who invited Niki to exhibit in New York the following October. He supported her financially for many years and organized numerous exhibitions for her, even though few of the exhibits sold much. It was Iolas who introduced her to the Surrealist painters, Victor Brauner, Max Ernst and Rene Magritte. Niki de Saint Phalle took part in a large-scale installation at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, in which Robert Rauschenberg, Martial Raysse, Jean Tinguely and Per Olof Ultvedt were also involved.
        In 1965, the first "Nanas" were exhibited in the Galerie Iolas in Paris. They were in no way seen by everyone as cheerful. On the contrary, critics labeled the seemingly lively and wildly dancing feminine figures with attributes such as "aggressive", "satirical" and "feminist". The "Giant Nana" realized in Stockholm one year later was even described as the "largest whore in the world". The work - titled "Hon - en katedral" (She - A Cathedral) - lied there with thighs spread open, offering visitors entry through her vagina.
        In 1967 In August, Niki de Saint Phalle's first retrospective was held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, under the title Les Nanas au pouvoi. For this exhibition she created her first Nana Dream House and her first Nana Fountain and planed her first Nana town.
        In spite of all the critics and skeptics, Niki de Saint Phalle became triumphantly successful with her controversial art. Her collaboration in the 1980s with the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely on a landmark fountain for the plaza of the Centre Pompidou in Paris is world renowned. The voluptuous Nanas are on display in numerous cities in France, Germany, Israel, Italy, and Japan. The marketing success of Niki de Saint Phalle perfume allowed the artist to fulfill a dream to create a park in northern Italy full of giant sculptures based on Tarot cards. In the 1990s de Saint Phalle worked in Hanover on the development of this unusual, spectacular garden. She was called the Honored Citizen of Hanover, and was working on a large grotto for her garden when she died in May, 2002.

In an excellent article on de Saint Phalle's work, Jill Johnson wrote in Art in America, (June 1996) the following:

       'Niki St. Phalle tragically confirms a background of parental abuse...After Tinguely's death in 1991, Saint Phalle wrote a book which contained details about her abusive childhood. This book, entitled Mon Secret (My secret) , disclosed her father's rape of her when she was only eleven years old. She writes, 'with great force and kicking my feet I disengaged from him and ran till I was completely exhausted...'
        Saint Phalle's work often reflects her turbulent childhood. The 1972 film Daddy, produced by Saint Phalle, contains scenes where the actor who plays her father is humiliated and killed off some fifteen times. Saint Phalle's first comprehensive retrospective contained letters in the catalogue spelling out childhood trauma to the living and the dead members of her family and friends. Saint Phalle's sculpture echoes the same trauma as her film and retrospective. In a dragon head entitled A House for Children (1973) one can see that the environment that she has created is clearly not for children reflecting her own feelings from childhood.
Later Saint Phalle began to work with cathartic works of violence assumed to be in reference again to her childhood. These cathartic works called "shooting paintings" were made of plaster surfaces which contained sections of multicolored continence. These paintings were then fired upon with rifles. Saint Phalle described her activities as 'shooting' the paintings so they bleed.'
        The Tarot garden in Garavicchio Italy, is a huge space filled with sculpture. Saint Phalle had actually lived inside the Tarot image of the Empress card which was in the shape of a sphinx. Her bedroom was in one breast, her kitchen in the other. 'at last my life long desire to live inside a sculpture would come true. An undulating round space without any right angles to threaten and attack me.'
        It seems that Saint Phalle had ultimately created a safe place for herself away from the childhood trauma of her past. This sense of protection created dramatic size and color of her sculpture structures are not only a safe haven but a reflection of Saint Phalle's fortress of self and how she has survived her past.'