ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

I wanted to share a bit about Niki de Saint Phalle, the self-taught French sculptor and painter.

Niki was born outside of Paris in 1930 to a wealthy banking family. After being wiped out financially by the Great Depression, she and her family moved from France to New York City.

While in New York, Niki was enrolled at the prestigious Brearley School, but perhaps as a sign of things to come, she was dismissed for painting fig leaves red on the school's statuary.

After graduating from Oldfields School in Maryland, Niki became a fashion model, appearing on the cover of Life Magazine, and a few years later, French Vogue. 

She eloped at 18 with childhood friend and author Harry Mathews, and soon had a daughter with him. 

The young mother was on a modeling assignment in France when she met American painter, Hugh Weiss, who became her friend and mentor. 

Niki moved to Spain, where she gave birth to a son, and began to pursue her career in the field of art. 
After dabbling briefly in naive-style oil painting and collage art, she famously turned to a new medium--the rifle. Inspired by the explosive methods of her stated "go-to thinkers": de Beauvoir, Proust and Goudi- she cocked her gun, aimed and fired at giant paint loaded canvases.

In the mid 1960's, Niki began to work alongside Swiss artist Jean Tinguely, whom she would later marry. Niki moved from her "shooting paintings" to developing the voluptuous female form of the Nana, French slang for “woman" in 1965, which led to the commission of the vast sculpture, She: a Cathedral for the Modern Museet in Stockholm. As she worked on brightly painted sculptures of animals and human figures, Niki conceived the idea for her Tarot Garden, a sculpture park inspired by Gaudí’s Parc Güell.

After nearly 20 years of work, and a considerable amount of money,  the Tarot Garden, filled with Niki's monumental sculpture and whimsical architecture opened in Tuscany in 1998.

I wanted to share my love of her voluptuous and whimsical, yet important sculpture. 

OLDEST KNOWN SCULPTURE

This 6 cm tall sculpture, carved from mammoth bone, is the oldest sculpture of a human figure.

This fertility figure, with it's exaggerated bust and anatomical details, is thought to be at least 35,000 years old.

The sculpture was discovered in the Hohle Fels Cave in Germany, which is how the tiny figurine gained the name "The Venus of Hohle Fels."

It is believed that the figure was suspended from a pendant, as instead of a head a small ring is carefully carved above it's broad shoulders.

The artefact is presumed to have been made by modern humans even though Neanderthals were still present in Europe at this time.

"We find all kinds of things in our caves - musical instruments, all kinds of ornaments, mythical representations of lion-men, not to mention all the different stone tools, bone tools, ivory tools, [and] antler tools. But we have no human bones that really tell us one way or the other who made these artefacts. I assume they were made by modern humans," said Nicholas Conard, professor of Early Prehistory at Tübingen University.

(Reference, BBC News)

Throughout history, venus figurines have played prominently in prehistoric art. These ancient tributes to the female form have been an inspiration for my own figurative works. Here are some of examples of my own fertility sculptures:

 

 

www.ninawinters.com

SCULPTURE OF THE WEEK 5/30

I wanted to share with you the inspiration behind my sculpture, "Ode to Venus" (right). In 1908 an archeologist discovered a female fertility figure carved from limestone in Willendorf, Australia."Venus of Willendorf" (left) stands 4 in. high and is estimated to have been made between 24,000 and 22,000 BC. Boldly sexual and designed for procreation, my sculpture is an homage to this sculpture from long ago.