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THIS WEEK on the GWA Podcast, we interview Bloum Cardenas, none other than the granddaughter of the trailblazing, French-American sculptor, painter, performance artist and more, NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE!!\n\nBorn in 1930 in France and living throughout the 20th century between America and Europe \u2013 she passed in 2002 \u2013 Saint Phalle is one of the century\u2019s greatest creative personalities. She pioneered not only the boundaries between painting, performance and conceptual art in Paris during the 1960s, but explored large scale immersive environments through her joyous, glittering sculptures. These include the Tarot Garden in Tuscany \u2013 this incredible paradisal sculpture park filled with these colossal Nana-style sculptures of these bulbous women, glittering in mosaics \u2013 or her 1966 work at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Hon - the Cathedral, where visitors would enter through the giant open legs of one of her Nana figures a world complete with a 12-seat cinema, a bar, a playground for kids, a fish pond and sandwich vending machine.\n\nIn the early 1960s she worked on her Shooting Paintings \u2013 violently shooting at canvases with bags of coloured paint that exploded and dripped onto a plaster surface. She used her \u2018shooting events\u2019 to fight against political corruption and the patriarchy. Employing large-scale canvases and masochistic gestures to emulate (and poke fun at) her male contemporaries, it was also through chance encounters and group efforts that Saint Phalle pioneered early concepts of Performance Art.\n\nBy the mid-1960s, Saint Phalle had taken a different direction, abandoning her Shooting Paintings for her Nana sculptures: voluptuous and bulbous figures that reclaim the female form and celebrate the \u2018everywoman\u2019. Speaking about them in 1972, she said: \u2018Why the nanas? Well, first because I am one myself. Because my work is very personal and I try to express what I feel. It is the theme that touches me most closely. Since women are oppressed in today\u2019s society I have tried, in my own personal way, to contribute to the Women\u2019s Liberation Movement.\u2019 \n\nBloum Cardenas, from 1985\u20131990, Bloum worked in the archives of her grandmother and in 1997, moved to San Francisco to help organise Saint Phalle\u2019s archived there. Since 2002, she has been a trustee for the for the Niki Charitable Art Foundation. She is also the president of the beloved Tarot Garden in Tuscany. \n\nENJOY!!!\n\n--\n\nPeter Schjendahl: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/05/the-pioneering-feminism-of-niki-de-saint-phalle \n\nNew Yorker on The Tarot Garden 2016: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/18/niki-de-saint-phalles-tarot-garden \n\nNew York Times 2021: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/arts/design/Niki-de-Saint-Phalle-MoMA-PS1-Salon-94.html \n\nArtforum: https://www.artforum.com/print/202105/johanna-fateman-on-the-art-of-niki-de-saint-phalle-85478 \n\nNiki de Saint Phalle Foundation website: http://nikidesaintphalle.org/niki-de-saint-phalle/biography/#1930-1949\n\nTate etc on living with Niki: https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-12-spring-2008/living-niki \n\nTate shots on Niki de Saint Phalle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV7aJ7XHeB4 \n\nNouveau R\xe9alisme: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/n/nouveau-realisme \n\nGutai: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/g/gutai \n\nShooting Paintings / Tirs https://www.moma.org/collection/works/150143 \n\nHon - A Cathedral http://nikidesaintphalle.org/50-years-since-hon/ // https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNfQt2FsUD4&feature=emb_logo // https://womennart.com/2018/08/22/hon-by-niki-de-saint-phalle/\n\nThe Tarot Garden http://ilgiardinodeitarocchi.it/en/ \n\n--\n\nFollow us:\nKaty Hessel: @thegreatwomenartists / @katy.hessel\nResearch assistant: Viva Ruggi\nSound editing by Nada Smiljanic\nArtwork by @thisisaliceskinner\nMusic by Ben Wetherfield\n\nhttps://www.thegreatwomenartists.com/\n\n--\n\nTHIS EPISODE IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY CHRISTIES: www.christies.com