Discover the exhibit dedicated to Niki de Saint Phalle at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec this summer
Published on June 16, 2025 • Attractions to discover
The featured exhibition at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec this summer will highlight over 150 works by French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle. Here’s an overview of the exhibition, which promises a vibrant and inspiring experience.
Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec
Freedom in motion
Through her creations, Niki de Saint Phalle sketched multiple visions of femininity, sometimes dazzling, sometimes minimalist.
With her emblematic Nanas, she celebrated the free woman: giant, generous, colourful sculptures in full dance, defying convention with joy and audacity. These powerful yet playful figures infuse the space they inhabit with irresistible energy.
In contrast to this exuberance, the Skinnies take shape in the delicateness of their lines. Thin, colourful tubes form slender, almost ethereal silhouettes. Niki de Saint Phalle, who suffered from lung problems at the time of these creations, imagined works that let the air she lacked circulate, reflecting her vital quest for breath and freedom.
Through matter, colour and even negative space, the artist sculpted a vision of the body and being in perpetual motion.
The Tarot Garden, a life’s work
In Tuscany, under a bright sun, Niki de Saint Phalle shaped a monumental dream: the Tarot Garden.
A life’s work, this unique creation brings together 22 gigantic sculptures, each inspired by a card of the Tarot deck. From The Fool to The Hermit to The Empress, each figure becomes a world in itself, vibrant with colour, mosaics and surprising shapes.
This colossal project, spanning some twenty years, required passion and perseverance. The artist even took up residence at the heart of her work, living for several years inside one of her sculptures to become one with her construction site.
Blending architecture, sculpture and imagination, the Tarot Garden is a vibrant tribute to creativity, spirituality and audacity.
The power of colour and joy
For Niki de Saint Phalle, colour is never a mere detail: it is living matter, a language of emotion, an affirmation of freedom.
Her work bursts with bright, bold, assertive, sometimes even explosive, hues. Pink, blue, yellow, green: each colour vibrates, converses, radiates.
For the artist, colour is a means of warding off pain, affirming joy and opening a door to the imaginary. Whether Nanas, Skinnies or the monumental sculptures in the Tarot Garden, each creation is a colourful hymn to life and emancipation.
Dive into this luminous universe at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and let colour and joy take you away.
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