RAIN, CLOUDS, TIME, TEARS
signed and numbered Niki de Saint Phalle 12/75 in pencil lower left
screenprint in colours on wove paper
50 x 65cm; 19 3/4 x 25 1/2in
unframed

Property from the Estate of Alexander Iolas

Niki de Saint Phalle (lots 70-74)
Executed between 1968 and 1970 the following five lots capture the artist's Saint Phalle's idiosyncratic style in which she combines vibrant colours with a youthful spirit. Teeming with characters, quotations and annotations, the works shed light on the artist's personal state of mind, which later informed her illustrated book AIDS: You Can’t Catch It Holding Hands of 1986, an important work that delivers life-saving healthcare information about the transmission of HIV through colourful cartoons in an attempt to destigmatise the disease.

Self-taught, in her early years Saint Phalle's work was dominated by feminist rage and destruction, but she gradually moved on to a period typified by the celebration of womanhood through sculptures of female bodies, often immense, in fibreglass and polyester resin. Her work reached its zenith in such monumental outdoor projects such as Dragon for the son of Roger Nellens, at Knokke-le-Zoute created in the early 1970s in collaboration with her long term creative and romantic partner Jean Tinguely (1925-1991), and The Tarot Garden, a sculpture garden in Pescia Fiorentina, Tuscany featuring twenty-two monumental figures inspired by Guadi's Parc Güell in Barcelona, that opened in 1998.