La Prairie Celebrates Artist Niki de Saint Phalle, Godmother Of Its Signature Skin Caviar Collection

The connection between the heritage beauty brand and the revolutionary artist, Niki de Saint Phalle, is deeply rooted by a chance connection, and her indelible influence continues to live on in La Prairie’s Skin Caviar Collection.

The signature cobalt blue that defines the Swiss luxury beauty brand’s most sought after collection derives from an encounter with Saint Phalle. In the Saint Phalle was in the midst of creating her eponymous perfume while sharing a design studio with La Prairie.

Noticing the bright cobalt blue in Saint Phalle’s paintings and sculptures, La Prairie inquired about its significance in her work. For Saint Phalle, the resplendent hue, and her favorite color, symbolized femininity, boldness, strength, and serenity, describing it as “the color of joy and luck.”

It would be a few more years before La Prairie would debut their world renowned Skin Caviar products, presented with Saint Phalle’s radiant cobalt blue as their signature color. The collaboration would forever link the iconic artist with the groundbreaking beauty collection.

The symbiosis can also be found in the pioneering spirit of the artist and the founder of La Prairie, Dr. Paul Niehans. Both shared an audacious courage of forging paths undiscovered, and experimenting with unconventional ideas that would result in new representations of beauty.

Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Saint Phalle was raised in New York and was the only female artist who was a member of the Nouveau Réalisme group, ( French for new realism and founded in the 1960 as the European version of the Pop Art movement), which boasts members such Christo, Tinguely , and founder Yves Klein.

Bold, unconventional and audacious, her brazenly looming statues and robustly colored paintings came to represent progressive feminist ideals, which championed a broader view of the female form and its representation.

It is in this spirit that La Prairie, through a partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, continues to honor Saint Phalle in supporting her work and highlighting the progressive themes that are prevalent in her work.

“ This collaboration with MCASD is a meaningful opportunity for us to share Niki’s philosophy with the world and associate her spirit: pioneer, persevering, strong, feminist to the one of La Prairie., “ says Nicholas Munafo, President of La Prairie North America.

The Museum, MCASD, recently reopened after an extensive renovation, is showing a special exhibition of Saint Phalle, which focuses on her seminal work during the 1960’s, a decade where she produced her series: Tirs, her “ Shooting Paintings” and the larger than life feminine forward sculptures she named, “ Nanas.”

As an early illustration of performance art, her Tirs painting invited audiences to shoot, with a 22 caliber rifle, at her paintings which she composed of found objects and bags of paint disguised in white plaster. As the bags of paint burst when shot with bullets, the colors would drip onto the canvas, satisfying Saint Phalle’s mission of making her paintings “bleed.” One of the participants was her friend and fellow artist, Jasper Johns.

Shifting from the violence to the female form, Saint Phalle drew inspiration from the wife of a friend, Clarice Rivers, who was pregnant at the time. In collaboration with Rivers’ husband, the collaged depiction celebrates the female form and pivots Saint Phalle’s visuality into the deeper studies of its power eventually giving way to the “Nanas,” her larger than life female forms in motion.

Saint Phalle settled in San Diego in the 1990’s until the end of her life. It was befitting for the museum, upon reopening, to celebrate her work.

“Having spent the last years of her life in La Jolla, many of Saint Phalle’s fantastical creatures and visionary environments cover our landscape and resonate with the community. This rare presentation, from a pivotal period in the artist’s career, is a gift to our public and a homecoming for the artist, “ says Kathryn Kanjo, CEO of MCASD.

“Niki de Saint Phalle: In the 1960’s” is currently showing until Sunday, July 17, 2022 at the Museum of Contemporary San Diego.