CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/12/2015

Niki de Saint Phalle

In a 1999 letter to her granddaughter Bloum Cardenas, Niki de Saint Phalle wrote, "Things started to go wrong when my bust grew. It was then that the dark side of my idealistic father showed itself. My father started to watch my breasts getting larger and my hips getting wider, and that interested him more than our discussions about politics or life. I was moreover quite a pretty girl. I became the object of his desire to exercise total power over me. Something happened between us, something which turned me away from my father forever. All that love was transformed into hate. I felt I'd been murdered. I could no longer stand to be in the same room with him. In 1961, daddy, I took my revenge by shooting at my paintings with a REAL GUN. Embedded in the plastic were pockets of paint. I shot you green and red and blue and yellow. YOU BASTARD! When you saw that, did you ever guess it was you I was shooting at?" Shunk-Kender's iconic image of de Saint Phalle during a shooting session at the Impasse Ronsin, 1961, is reproduced from La Fabrica's essential new monograph.