[Exposition] Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely, radical utopia

Famous girls. Meanwhile, rifle shooting that “bleed” the painting of Niki de Saint Phalle with “useless” machines by Jean Tinguely, a large exhibition revisited in Paris the joyful radicality of this couple of artists.

Initially scheduled for June 20. Meanwhile, the opening of the “Niki de Saint Phalle, Jean Tinguely, Pontius Holten” exhibition was postponed for a week “in order to allow maintenance operations in the exhibition galleries,” said the organizers on Thursday.

Some 200 works-sculptures. However, automatic machines, installations, paintings-of the Franco-American Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) and Switzerland Jean Tinguely (1925-1991) as well as a number of photographs, rare archive films and letters-of-graduates are presented on 2,000 m² renovated galleries from the Grand Palais.

The exhibition inaugurates the collaboration between the Building at La Grande Verrière. For example, recently renovated, and the Pompidou center, [exposition] niki de saint phalle which is to close for five years of work from September 22.

It highlights the key moments of the career of the two artists. Moreover, their unwavering links and their vision of art as an act of rebellion against standards, through the prism of Pontus Hulten (1924-2006), their friend.

This very first director of the great National Museum of Modern Art at the Center Pompidou carried a radical. Similarly, innovative museum approach. However, He will promote the acquisition of their works by institutions. For example, organize their first retrospectives in 1980 and 1988, fundamentally sharing their share of utopia and dreams.

Among the nuggets exposed. one of the first Pineapple black from Niki de Saint Phalle, Black Rosy (1965), is “very emblematic of the artist’s opening to societal issues such as the place of women in society or that of racialized people”, explains [exposition] niki de saint phalle Sophie Duplaix, chief conservative of contemporary collections at the Museum of Modern Art of the Pompidou Center and Commissioner of the Exhibition.

By his side. three other sculpted characters inevitably attract the look: a deformized and endimanché couple, walking a huge spider, “symbol of the mother, with which the artist had difficult relationships”, underlines the commissioner.

Also unusual his paintings of Shotsretraced in a film showing the artist at work and several of which are exhibited.

“While. until then, she produced works in the vein of brut art and reliefs, she began in 1961 a new striking series: she fixes pockets of colors and eggs, even tomatoes, on panels which she covers with immaculate white plaster. She then places them vertically. shoots on the rifle until the color pockets explode, generating paint flows, ”explains Sophie Duplaix.

“Very acerbic critic of easel’s painting. it is also a [exposition] niki de saint phalle way of expressing female power since the rifle is associated with masculinity and it takes it to make a very innovative art,” she adds.

“Technically, Tinguely has always been alongside Niki de Saint Phalle, but they constantly launched challenges,” continues Sophie Duplaix. “When they met in 1956. fell as a couple in 1960, they settled and worked dead end (note: in the south of Paris), where (the sculptor) Brancusi has a workshop. Towards the mid-1960s. they will move to an old Essonne inn, which will be their workshop for years “before their separation, she says.

Jean Tinguely died in 1991. His funeral in Friborg. his hometown, which attend 10,000 people, according to the commissioner, are retraced in a film such as “a work in itself with fanfare, click of carnival, machine automaton”. After his death. Niki de Saint Phalle will pay tribute to him [exposition] niki de saint phalle by a series of “broken paintings”, presented in the exhibition: elements painted in bright colors assembling and separating thanks to an integrated mechanism.

Among the most spectacular works of Jean Tinguely. Hell (1984) sets up at regular intervals quantity of objects – sound and mobile sculptures, manufactured and recovery objects – on a huge platform.

Like many of her works. she made the fierce criticism of mechanization and technological progress of the industrial society of the Thirty Glorious Years.

After his death. helped by Pontus Hulten, Niki de Saint Phalle will finish Le CyclopVisitable metal monster and work of his whole life.

Until January 4, 2026. Grand Palais – Paris.