The jubilant work of Niki de Saint Phalle
This summer in Aix-en-Provence, the powerful and jubilant work of Niki de Saint Phalle takes over the city’s spaces for a truly vibrant experience. The exhibition brings together iconic sculptures, colorful installations, and a few lesser-known pieces, revealing all the artist’s eccentricity.
The famous Nanas dance in the gardens and on the facades, embodying joy, feminine strength, and a very contemporary sense of freedom.
An indoor journey complements this celebration: collages and vibrant paintings, where color bursts forth in free gestures.
But beyond the visual festivity, the exhibition recalls Niki’s political and social commitment, how she used art to denounce, provoke, and move. Texts, archives, and photographs accompany the works, tracing her fight for women’s rights and her fascination with myths, rebellion, and love.
The visitor moves through a universe where resin, mirrors, paint, and assemblages coexist with undeniable momentum and energy.
The legendary Stravinsky Fountain in Paris seems to find an unexpected resonance here, in the Provençal heat, as water slips between sculpted forms.
The exhibition is as much an ode to color as it is a tribute to the freedom embodied by an extraordinary woman artist.
Each work enters into dialogue with its setting: a cloister corner, a gallery, or a public square — everything becomes a stage. An homage to Niki is also an homage to necessary fantasy, to creative struggle, to joyful insubordination.
Projected films reveal her performances, her collaborations with Jean Tinguely, and her more intimate and introspective side.
One leaves the exhibition with a kind of happy vertigo: how else can one think about sculpture, feminism, color, or even the city itself?
At the moment of departure, one carries away a smile, a memory — and the unaltered pleasure of feeling free, strong, and profoundly alive.
