Niki de Saint Phalle

Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle survived a traumatic childhood and married young, bearing two children before she began making art in a naïve, experimental style. The early work was angry: assemblages she attacked with firearms. Those gave way to the Nanas — whimsical, large-scale sculptures of animals, monsters, and female figures — and eventually to the Tarot Garden, a sprawling sculpture park of house-sized creations. She had no formal training but moved easily among contemporaries like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Cage, and worked for decades alongside Swiss kineti…