shelidonAugust 7, 2024Leave a Comment

In a fortuitous coincidence, I was strolling through a bookshop with a friend and I stumbled across this charming tiny book by Lorenza Pieri on the life and work of Niki de Saint Phalle, and it’s extraordinary because I ad just added her Tarot Garden in Tuscany to a list of must-see places we’re drafting with friends.

Niki de Saint Phalle, born Catherine-Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle on October 29, 1930, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, was the second of five children in a family that faced financial difficulties after the Great Depression. Her father was a French banker; her mother, an American actress. They moved to New York City when Niki was seven years old, and she had always seen her upbringing as a source of privilege and horror, of hidden and unspeakable trauma.
She began her artistic journey in the late 1940s, initially working as a model for magazines like Vogue and Life, and she eventually transitioned to creating art in a naïve, experimental style. Her early works included Tir paintings, where she shot at canvases filled with paint-filled bags, expressing her anger and frustration, and evolved into her signature Nanas, colourful sculptures celebrating the human body with apparent joy and an underlying condemnation of the judgment for different bodies. I’m sure you’ve seen them.

Throughout her career, Niki used her art to address social issues, including feminism, violence, and environmental concerns. She collaborated with various artists and was particularly close to Swiss kinetic artist Jean Tinguely, who became her husband.
One of her most ambitious projects was the Tarot Garden in Italy, a 14-acre sculpture garden featuring large, fantastical representations of tarot cards. This project took nearly two decades to complete and opened to the public in 1998.

The enlargement of my models was made perfectly with a medieval eye, by Jean Tinguely and Doc Winsen. All of the monumental sculptures armatures were made from welded steel bars, formed by brute strength on the knees of the crew. The first crew who welded in the garden were: Jean Tinguely, Rico Weber and Seppi Imhof. They built the Sphinx, The High Priestress and the Magician.

The Pope was started by Doc Winsen and finished by Jean Tinguely, it was Jean’s favorite sculpture of all the garden. The second half of the Tarot Garden; The Emperor’s Castle, The Sun, The Dragon (Strength), and The Tree of Life (The Hanged Man) were welded by Doc Winsen, a Dutch artist. Doc was assisted by Tonino Urtis.

Next came Ugo, the postman, who began by making stone paths, and then graduated to putting the wire mesh on the steel structures to receive the cement. Later Ugo would ask me to try his hand at putting the mirrors on the sculptures. He has become a poet of putting on mirrors. He’s always always afraid there would be no more work for him. I have made the solemn promise that I would make sure that there was always something new to do each year, and if I run out of ideas, I will make a wall of China around the garden that should take several generations to finish.

Once the steel armatures were finished and the wire mesh was stretched over them, they were ready for gunite cement which was sprayed on. The sculptures then had a melancholy look with a certain sad beauty. My purpose, however, was to make a garden of joy. The finishing of the cement was later done by hand with Marco Iacotonio, a very beautiful and difficult young man.

Early on I chose Tonino Urtis to be the head of the crew, even though he had no experience; he had been an electrician before. I have always used my instinct in my choices, not my brain, and very often these choices proved right. I then asked Ricardo Menon, my personal assistant, collaborator and great friend who had come with me from Paris, to find me a ceramist. A few days later Ricardo presented me with Venera Finocchiaro. Venera would become the ceramist of the garden. It was total immersion. She lived at the garden and responded to my asking her to do new things in ceramics that had not been done before. The magnificent work she produced speaks for itself. She has several assistants, the main ones being Paola, Patrizia and Gemma.

The twentieth century was forgotten. We were working Egyptian style. The ceramics were molded, in most cases, right on the sculptures, numbered, taken off, carried to the ovens, cooked and glazed, and then put back in place on the sculptures. When ceramics are cooked there is a 10% loss in size, so the resulting empty space around the ceramics were filled in with hand cut pieces of glass. This was done by a variety of different people-the main ones being Marco Iacotonio, Tonino Urtis and Claudio Celleti.

Read more here, and I really hope I’ll be able to see it.