Saint Phalle mastered gloss techniques for preserving their painted services--in black and white and sizzling color--outdoors. Nothing about her work jibed with anything then current in art. Today, as categorical distinctions among art mediums and styles deliquesce, it comes off as heroic. -- Peter Schjeledahl * New Yorker *
Saint Phalle’s work ha[s] always existed in a near past, very now, and future tense. -- John Reed * Observer *
In her sculptures, drawings, paintings, performances, films, writings, playgrounds, habitable structures, and public persona, Saint Phalle presented an oracular—if sometimes fragmented, contradictory, and perplexing—vision of utopia, inventing the iconography, erecting the monuments, and dreaming the fantastic architecture of a new society. -- Johanna Fateman * Artforum *
Her emphasis on working in and for the public sphere, not only to make her work accessible to a broad range of audiences—particularly demographics that are typically ignored in art...this is inspiring today for artists who are seeking new ways of working, but also in how she was able to make an impact. * Galerie *
In Niki de Saint Phalle’s vibrant, multidimensional universe, Saint Phalle raises all the issues that adults learn to tolerate and “live with,” but which children constantly question. -- Johanna Sluiter * Hyperallergic *
It’s one of the most surprising [books] of the season, with a heavy emphasis on her later, monumental work in parks and other outdoor spaces: walk-in structures, somewhere between architecture and public art, where caves are covered in mirrors and monsters’ pink tongues turn into slides. -- Jason Farago * New York Times *
The avant-garde artist was one of the late twentieth century’s great creative personalities, with traits that once shadowed and now halo her importance. -- Peter Schjeldahl * New Yorker *