Niki de Saint Phalle at Zürich Kunsthaus

I wasn’t going to be like you mother. You accepted what had been handed down to you by your parents, your religion, masculine and feminine roles, your ideas about society and security. I would spend my life questioning. I would fall in love with the question mark (…)’

I wasn’t familiar with the work of Niki de Saint Phalle before moving to Switzerland but I fell in love at first sight with L’Ange Protecteur, one of her gloriously over-sized and colourful Nanas watching over the multitude of travellers passing through Zürich HB every day.

And then the opportunity arose to find out more about this fascinating artist at the latest exhibition of her work at Zürich Kunsthaus as part of my birthday celebrations last month.

Niki was born in Paris in 1930 to a French father and an American mother but she mainly grew up in the US and was later granted Swiss citizenship (entitled to reside in Basel) as a result of her marriage to the Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely in 1971. Like Tinguely (who's Heureka sculpture is situated in Zürichhorn Park) she was close to the family of the art patron and collector Theodor Ahrenberg who also lived in Switzerland.

Niki was sexually abused by her father as a child and she acknowledges that art became a kind of therapy for her. Indeed, the exhibition charts her journey through an extremely broad spectrum of work which is eccentric, extremely emotional and often very dark and brutal. You can feel her anger – at her father, her mother, politicians, heads of state, prejudice and the man’s world she lived in. It is in the large part, a world away from her cheerful ‘Nanas’ she later became famous for.

But Niki’s work is also humorous, challenging and always enigmatic. There is a whole series of wonderful illustrations about her life as a child and for a book about AIDS in the 80s. She recycles leftover materials to great effect in works such as Nightscape (1959) and there is a childlike joy in the simplicity of her oils such as The Ballet Class (1953-55) and Play with Me (1955)

I especially loved her 'shooting' paintings and fancied King Kong (1962/3) as a major political statement of the day, it reminded me of Picasso's Guernica. Altar of Women is powerful and I was enthralled with the children's playground pieces, heavily influenced by Gaudi. I especially loved the story about Keith Haring living in the middle of one of the playground pieces for a while (which doubled up as an apartment) because he loved it so much.

I imagine this is a good exhibition to take slightly older children to - although it was disappointing we couldn't enter Skull (meditation room) This really is an engaging and wonderful exhibition, which I can heartily recommend.

The exhibition runs until 8.1.2023. Tickets cost 23.-. Entry free for all under 16 years of age.

kunsthaus.ch

Altar of Women, 1964, mixed media

King Kong, 1962/3. mixed media

Skull (meditation room) 1990