Niki de Saint Phalle

Niki de Saint Phalle, born Catherine Marie-Agnes Fal de Saint Phalle, was a French American sculptor, painter, filmmaker and author who lived from 1930 to 2002 and became one of the few female monumental sculptors of her time despite having no formal art training. Working through the nouveau realisme and feminist art movements, she produced the violent Tirs assemblages shot with firearms in the early 1960s, the colorful large-scale female figures called Nanas, and the Tarot Garden sculpture park in Italy, built from 1974 to 1998. She is regarded as one of the most significant female and feminist artists of the twentieth century.