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“The heroine of her own fairy tale, she slays her own dragons, domesticating dangerous monsters into playful companions.” So the art historian and critic Barbara Rose wrote of Niki de Saint Phalle in the December 1987 issue of Vogue.
Saint Phalle herself happened to share that point of view. As she once put it in a letter: “Very early I decided to become a hero. Who would I be? George Sand? Joan of Arc? Napoleon in petticoats?”
One of the most dazzling figures in contemporary art, the French American artist was one half of a dynamic creative collaboration (and, for 20 years, an actual marriage) with Jean Tinguely, the seminal Swiss sculptor and master of machines, that lasted from the 1950s until his death in 1991. “Niki de Saint Phalle Jean Tinguely: Myths Machines”—a new exhibition at Hauser Wirth’s bucolic outpost in Somerset, England, arranged in collaboration with the Niki Charitable Art Foundation—brings together Saint Phalle and Tinguely’s work in the UK for the first time. (More shows dedicated to Tinguely’s work are also taking place in Paris and Geneva to mark his centennial.)
“We couldn’t sit down together without creating something new, conjuring up dreams,” Saint Phalle said of Tinguely, and there is plenty of magic in the Somerset show. On display amid clipped green lawns and the Piet Oudolf–designed meadow are Tinguely’s kinetic machine sculptures, poking and prodding at the flaws and potentials of modern technology, as well as Saint Phalle’s shooting paintings from 1961, for which she would fire a rifle at canvas and altar-like structures—a response to France’s political unrest and her own personal bid for catharsis as a survivor of sexual abuse. Both artists were propelled forward by rebellious creative ideas and ambitions to make art that anyone could access.
One particularly striking example is Saint Phalle’s series of Nanas sculptures—the name taken from the French slang for “girl”—which dance on the Somerset lawn. From the windows of the Workshop Gallery (where the artists’ intimate correspondence and Saint Phalle’s fantastical doodles can be seen), the voluptuous, sparkly figures appear to twirl in the sun, a beloved army of women in kaleidoscopic colors.
All these figures loom large for Bloum Cardenas, Saint Phalle’s granddaughter and the president of Il Giardino dei Tarocchi. They were Cardenas’s playground growing up, but today she is a custodian for their legacies and seeks to defy the dismissal of Saint Phalle in the contemporary canon.
Below, Cardenas speaks to Vogue about the Hauser Wirth show and finding new appreciation for Saint Phalle and Tinguely’s themes among younger generations.
Vogue: This exhibit is significant in many ways; it’s part of Jean Tinguely’s centennial celebrations and marks Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle’s first joint exhibition in the UK. How did you put it in motion?
Bloum Cardenas: It’s been about two years of trying to get the machine going in order to celebrate Jean properly. His machines are fragile, and people have maybe forgotten some of his greatness. I realized that I had to put the pressure on. A friend visited the Tarot Garden with another friend who worked for Hauser Wirth, and he was so struck seeing these two artists together: their contradictions, the balance of the masculine and feminine, their poetic sense of humor. It all clicked. That helped to accelerate things. It was important to me that Hauser Wirth is a Swiss gallery, too, as Jean was one of Switzerland’s greatest 20th-century artists. Symbols are important, especially in our family.
We considered Hauser Wirth in Menorca, but the team insisted on Somerset—somewhere I had never been! But I trusted the professionals. When I arrived, I was shocked at how on point it was. Jean and Niki moved out of the city early on and worked in barns. They loved the rural life. It felt very beautifully British but also meant to be.
I had such a visceral reaction to seeing the exhibition—the gorgeous gardens, the curation. You start with Tinguely’s moving kinetic machines, then you move to Saint Phalle’s stark and solemn shooting pictures, then you look out the window and see the Nana sculptures in the gardens.
It’s beautifully curated. I’m thankful this is happening right now, before the big exhibition in Paris, where we see Tinguely, Niki, Pontus Hultén—all artistic friends. Then we’re opening an exhibition for Jean’s centennial in Geneva. You see the real scope of both of their work. In Somerset, we have their very intimate correspondence on display. You see their love, humor, and generosity. In the Somerset gardens, they get the fountains on and children run through the water with the Nanas. I was fortunate enough to be a kid around Niki and Jean, so I truly got to understand the magic of their work. It’s wonderful to get people young to understand art and see that art is a part of life.
How did you even begin to distill the scope of their work? For Saint Phalle in particular, from the shooting paintings to the Nanas, the range in form and storytelling is so vast.
It’s always important to tell stories or at least to create a path so that people can create their own stories. We show all these different creative languages that they used both together and separately, from imagery to cinema to moving machines and the fountain. It’s wonderful to blur the boundaries between public and private art in this exhibition, and that’s actually very rare. And while this show is so much about joy and humor and providing a bit of a solace from the darkness of the world, the heavy subjects are there—but in a poetic way.
That’s the beauty of their work: There are converging and contradicting ideas. I love that you can see how intensely they collaborated but also the real delineations between them. You would maybe think, as a couple, that they would have mirrored each other more. Instead, they have a singular sense of artistic identity.
And even sometimes they’re in total opposition, but opposites attract! Yin and yang is a creation structure. I hope that the younger generation can find inspiration in that. It’s important to see art as a space for freedom of thought and possibility—to do something with that feeling of bombardment by politics, climate crisis, the erosion of women’s rights, war. We really need the artists and their voices because they can be leaders without being so didactic or black and white. I think Niki and Jean’s generous work represents that.
I’d love to talk about Saint Phalle’s Nanas and their themes. I think they can hold so many things: They have these voluptuous bodies, made at a time when that wasn’t perceived as a beauty standard, but they’re also warrior-like.
I’ve had people say to me, “Oh, they’re so whimsical!” And that’s the last word I’d use for them, personally. They are an army of women coming to take over the world with joy and sex as their weapons. Joy is such a big theme in Niki’s work, which wasn’t a particularly popular tenet of art at the time. Niki had so much trauma and anxiety, as well as her health issues, so it wasn’t totally natural to put such joy out into the world. She thought of them as guardians and protectors.
Saint Phalle’s artistic practice really showed how art can be a channel for respite and catharsis from personal trauma and societal issues too.
Absolutely. And that is why she’s so well understood today by the younger generation. It resonates so personally. It’s wonderful for me, being between these two generations, to see that the younger ones truly get it.
And how do you see different generations interacting with their work?
People are talking much more today. Niki came from a very oppressed time and experienced some deep traumas, but her work can really impact women across generations. In Bilbao, I saw these old ladies looking at Niki’s “Devouring Mothers,” which is very dark and surreal. These are women who lived through the years of Franco. You could see some were quite upset.
We had an exhibition in Paris 10 years ago with Camille Morineau, who created AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research, and Exhibitions. She has a very feminist approach. Seeing her skill in recontextualizing Niki’s work for a younger, radical generation was fantastic. Niki’s work offers new ways to free yourself, even today.
You grew up so immersed in Saint Phalle’s work. How has your relationship to her art evolved?
When she passed away, I felt like I had a couple of wars to win. She was perceived as a commercial artist because she had done things like perfume. People never understood it, but I knew that she was doing it so she could be her own sponsor: She could do the Tarot Garden and not owe anything to anyone. Today, you look at famous people and they have 15 perfumes under their names and brand sponsorships everywhere! Good for them, all the power, we love Rihanna! It’s very different for the younger generation because they get that need for autonomy. But when Niki passed away, you could see that hesitancy in the art market. Niki was brave enough to want to be completely independent, and that has always inspired me. Correcting that history was vital for me.
For Niki, too, public art was very important at a time when there was a lot of exclusivity. I’ve been happy to see the evolution in the art world turn her way. Niki now is seen as a hero, and I’m so proud of that. It’s been my mission. It’s a privilege to love someone and see people loving her. It is wonderful to see artists live on through their work and create new paths still.
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How did Saint Phalle and Tinguely set the scene for their own legacy?
They were self-aware and had big egos, so they were definitely concerned with their legacy. The Tinguely Museum in Switzerland exists because when Jean died, Niki knew she couldn’t do it on her own. Collaborating with an institution [she donated more than 50 pieces of his art] created a space to keep his work public in a continuum. In his centenary year, that’s all the more important. We’re seeing machines that are free at a time when everybody is afraid of them taking over. We’re asking: What do we do with this technology we’ve built? All the more relevant today. My dream is for the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk—with his understanding of society and technology—to write about Jean’s machines.
“Niki de Saint Phalle Jean Tinguely: Myths Machines” is on view at Hauser Wirth Somerset through February 1, 2026.
