Shooting Paintings

If Pollock introduced the concept of "action painting", Niki de Saint-Phalle added an element of power to it.

Saint-Phalle had a particularly traumatic childhood.

Born in 1930, to an aristocratic family who had lost everything in the 1929 financial crash, she was brought up by her grandmother in France, before moving to New York, where she was raped by her father and beaten by her mother. Both her younger siblings later committed suicide.

She started modeling as a teenager and become a mother at 21, moving to Europe with her husband and baby, where they traveled and lived a bohemian life.

However she suffered a nervous breakdown at 22 and was sent to a psychiatric hospital to receive electro-shocks.

During her travels, she became fascinated by the works of Gaudi, Duchamp and Pollock - and decided to become a full-time artist.

Shooting Paintings brought her international fame.

She hid bags full of colourful paint behind a white plaster installation - and shot at them using rifles or miniature cannons.

This process was often a collective experience, as she invited fellow artists and those who had commissioned the artwork to join in the shooting.

Like Pollock, she believed that the act of creating an artwork was as significant as the artwork itself.

In addition to her Shootings, she is also very famous for her Nanas - monumental, curvy and colourful figures celebrating female power and sensuality.