The Nanas

Niki de Saint Phalle’s early sculptural female figures of brides and women gave way within a few years to the series of Nanas. The Nanas, large-scale and brightly coloured sculptures of women, were voluptuous goddess-like creatures. Triumphant and larger than life, they are enduring emblems of maternity and femininity.

The Nanas first appeared in 1964 and took their inspiration from Saint Phalle’s pregnant friend, Clarice Rivers. Initially made of fabric with found objects attached, as in Venus 1964 and Erica 1965, Saint Phalle began to introduce polyester to create plumper, more active and vibrant figures. Several black and white Nanas were created in reaction to the Black Rights movement in America, a testament to the artist’s belief that all women are goddesses, regardless of colour. 

The ultimate Nana was Hon, a monumental reclining sculpture created in collaboration with Jean Tinguely and Per Olof Ultvel, exhibited at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm in 1966. She was the epitome of the empowering Nana and filled an entire exhibition hall. Hon was destroyed at the end of the exhibition but the figure has retained a vital place within art history.

Works produced for Saint Phalle’s Tarot Sculpture garden in Italy, a life-long project to produce a large sculpture park based on a pack of Tarot cards, would be influenced by the Nanas. As seen here in Temperance (Jardin des Tarots) 1985, the sculpture takes the characteristic rounded forms of the Nanas but is transformed into the tarot character ‘Temperance’. In the late 1980s Saint Phalle produced The Skinnies, pared down transparent versions of her voluptuous sculptures, forms which also appear in her Tarot works.