Niki Michaël Bihain Biography

Paris, France 1930 ? 2002

An established French artist, Niki de Saint Phalle worked as a sculptor, painter, and film maker. Her first art exhibition was held in 1956 in Switzerland where she displayed naive style oil paintings. She then moved onto collage work that often featured objects of violence, such as guns and knives.

In the early 60s she gained international fame for her ?Shooting? paintings for which she shot bullets from a .22 calibre rifle at paint containers, spilling their contents over the canvas. She later passed through a period where she explored the various roles of women, sculpting life size dolls of brides and mothers giving birth.

She travelled and showed her work extensively across the world, and was influenced by a number of artists, perhaps most significantly by Antoni Gaudi.