Niki de Saint-Phalle

Alexandre Iolas, Athens
Private Collection (acquired from the above by the present owner. Sold: Sotheby’s, Paris, 26th May 2008, lot 31)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou & Stockholm, Moderna Museet, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Rétrospective 1954-80, 1981, illustrated in the catalogue
Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Niki de Saint-Phalle : L'invitation au Musée, 1993, illustrated in the catalogue
Angers, Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Angers, Niki de Saint-Phalle, des assemblages aux œuvres monumentales, 2004, illustrated in the catalogue
Barcelona, Fondació Joan Miró, La dona, metamorfosi de la modernitat, 2004-05, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

La machine à rêver, executed in 1970, exemplifies the exuberantly inventive style for which Niki de Sainte Phalle is best-known. She first began to create figural sculpture in 1965 when she conceived of her Nanas – an extensive series inspired by the changing position of women in contemporary society. These rotund figures, typically posed in deliberately playful manner, convey a spirit of freedom and jubilation, and represent the artist’s provocation of the male-dominated Parisian art world. In the same year as the present work was created, the Galerie Alexandre Iolas in Paris organised a solo exhibition entitled Le rêve de Diane. The artist presented a series of sculptures incorporating the figure of Nana and other various entangled forms, which projected an atmosphere perilously balanced between bliss and nightmare.

De Saint Phalle revisited these ideas in La machine à rêver, in which the seated figure’s reverie is caught in brightly-hued wheels and amorphous shapes. In various rhetorical letters de Saint Phalle discussed the ideas from where such works came. One of these letters evokes the escapism of dreaming: ‘One thing saved me during those difficult teenage years: MY SECRET AND IMAGINARY MAGIC BOX hidden under my bed. It was made of a precious carved wood inlaid with richly colored glazes. NO OTHER THAN I COULD SEE THE BOX. When I was alone I opened it, and all kinds of incredibly colorful fish, geniuses, wild sweet-scented flowers flowed out of it.’ (Pontus Hultén, Niki de Saint-Phalle, 1999, pp. 150-151). The personal iconography that emerged from these juvenile origins resonates with universal concerns, as de Saint Phalle herself noted: ‘in my work… everything is used – great joys, desires, tragedies and pains. It is all subjective. It is all my life. Nothing is secret. I have nowhere to hide. Luckily people cannot always see what they look at. It is their past, their unconscious dreams that they see’ (quoted in Ulrich Krempel et al, Niki de Saint Phalle: Monograph, Lausanne, 2001, n.p.).