Niki de Saint Phalle: Life & Work 1971–1977
Niki's first permanent architectural project is a private commission for a summer residence in the south of France, completed in 1971. Niki begins to develop other "fantastic" architectural projects that require intensive planning and organization. Niki travels to India and Egypt, broadening the repertoire of cultural experiences and visual associations used in her work.
Niki and Jean Tinguely marry on July 13, 1971.
Niki receives a public commission to create Golem, an architectural project for children in Jerusalem's Rabinovitch Park, which is completed the following year.
In 1972, Niki receives a second private architectural commission in Belgium and begins a productive association with art fabricator Haligon for her large-scale sculptures and work in editions. Niki also makes her first jewelry design for GEM Montebello Laboratory, Milan.
Niki creates three large-scale Nanas for a permanent site near the town hall in Hannover, Germany in 1974. The city names them Sophie, Charlotte, and Caroline in honor of three historically distinguished queens of Hannover.
Niki is hospitalized with a serious lung ailment and recuperates in the Swiss mountains. While there, she meets an old friend from her time in New York in the 1950s, Marella Caracciolo Agnelli. Niki shares her dream of building a sculpture garden based on symbols from the Tarot. Marella's brothers, Carlo and Nicola Caracciolo, offer a parcel of land in Garavicchio in Tuscany, Italy, as a site. The massive undertaking of the garden will consume Niki's thoughts and energies for nearly twenty years.
In 1975, her sculptural tableau Last Night I Had a Dream is installed on the exterior of the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, for an arts festival. She returns to Switzerland for a period of time and further develops ideas for her Tarot Garden.
