In 1980 Pierre Restany wrote about deSaint Phalle's Nanas, 'In 1965 Niki de Saint Phalle had an inspiration by watching her friend Clarice, who was at the next atelier. Clarice was pregnant and her body expanded and became rounder day by day. One day, Niki felt suddenly freed, and started to produce round bodied statues of women full of confidence and power called Nana.She created Nana Power and other works of the Nana series one after another, and they were to be regarded as her most important work.
       The name Nana is a synonym or variation of ancient mother goddesses of Egypt and the Orient, Inanna, Nanna, Anna, Hannah, Anne, Anne-Marie, Di-Anna, Isis, Ishtar, and so on. Each was a virgin goddess, both the ancestral mother goddess of all the other deities and the grandmother goddess (the earth goddess). She was at once all deities and the sole goddess, while sometimes unexpectedly appearing as a virgin consecrated to a deity or even at times as a prostitute.'
       The Nanas embrace contradictory qualities such as good and evil, modern and primitive, sacred and profane, play and terror. Her exaggerated "earth mother" sculptures, the Nanas, playfully explore the ancient tradition of feminine deities while celebrating modern feminism's efforts to reconsider and revalue the woman's body.