CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/6/2021

Remarkable 'Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life' closes today at MoMA PS1

Featured image—a photocollage of scenery for Niki de Saint Phalle's unfinished 1977 children's video, The Travelling Companion—is reproduced from Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life, published to accompany the outstanding show closing today at MoMA PS1—remarkably, the artist's first exhibition at a New York museum, and one of her most expansive shows in the United States. Focused on Saint Phalle’s radical, euphoric and feminist public structures, it collects sculptures, works on paper, films and rarely seen archival materials. "The utopian aspect of Saint Phalle’s work is located in its formal, functional, and cultural hybridity," MoMA PS1 curator Ruba Katrib writes. "While [de Saint Phalle] found inspiration in cultures the world over, her output was distinctive, and it captured the imaginations of adults and children alike. For half a century, working in and out of the spotlight, she developed a practice that defies definition. She continuously honed and reinvented her work without concern for the judgments of her fellow artists or critics."