Exhibitions


Mudec - Museo delle Culture di Milano, Milan (IT)    5 October 2024 - 16 February 2025

Niki de Saint Phalle

From October 5, 2024, to February 16, 2025, Mudec brings to Milano the first retrospective in an Italian museum on French American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930 – 2002). Regarded as one of the 20th century's most influential artists, she is known for challenging gender stereotypes and advocating for freedom and rights through her art. The Fondation Gandur pour l'Art participates in this exhibition by loaning two Nanas from 1965.

Curator: Lucia Pesapane

A major figure of the avant-garde art scene during the 1960s and 1970s in Europe and the United States, Niki de Saint Phalle was a painter, sculptor, experimental filmmaker, and performer who has been the subject of many retrospectives worldwide.

The "Niki de Saint Phalle" exhibition at Mudec in Milan, delves into the artist's career through eight thematic sections. It explores her beginnings with her performances of gun shooting on canvas up to her late practice in the mid-1990s with her making of the sculpture park Queen Califia's Magical Circle in the Californian desert. The display reflects on her quest for a new matriarchal society where women are not bound to marriage, children and the household, and all prostitutes, witches, brides, mothers and goddesses are deemed worthy. A section is devoted to her Nanas – such as Jackie and The Lady Sings the Blues, loaned by the Fondation Gandur pour l'Art, and another to her monumental Tarot Garden created in 1978 in Garavicchio. The exhibition also shows Saint Phalle's fights for justice, supporting AIDS patients in the eighties and representing African Americans with her Black Heroes series. One section approaches more personal issues, like her relationship with her dad, as well as her enduring violence and abuse.

In Mudec's agora, next to the exhibition, is a selection of dresses from the artist's wardrobe created for her by friend and couturier Marc Bohan for Christian Dior.

MUDEC - MUSEO DELLE CULTURE DI MILANO
Via Tortona 56
20144 Milano, Italy

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Works on loan

Niki de SAINT PHALLE
Jackie
Septembre 1965
Niki de SAINT PHALLE
The Lady Sings the Blues
Avril-mai 1965