Niki de Saint Phalle | The Devouring Mothers

Niki de Saint Phalle

The Devouring Mothers

London, New York & Zurich: Gimpel Fils, 1972

[28] pp, 14 × 17 × 1 cm., string-bound

First edition of fifty signed and numbered copies

A story book whose illustrations appear at first glance to be whimsical and lighthearted, in contrast to the disturbing subject matter of an abusive father and devouring mother.

Niki de Saint Phalle died on this day in 2002, at the age of 71.

"A wall text at the Guggenheim described the ‘Nanas’ as ‘warriors in the feminist battle’, their bodies expressing ‘femininity without restraint, feminism with a smile’. I am unconvinced. Their appeal to an essentializing, voluptuous maternity is simplistic and anachronistic – even for the late 1960s and early ’70s, when second-wave feminists were fighting to divorce feminine identity from biological function. More interesting is Saint Phalle’s series of ‘Devouring Mothers’, sculptures and sketches made in the early 1970s. Darker versions of the earth mother archetype, these dowdy matriarchs take tea with babies in place of cakes; one swallows Daddy whole."

- Amy Sherlock, Frieze