Niki de Saint Phalle and her Tarot Garden
Giardino dei Tarocchi

The Tarot Garden was a sanctuary of imagination and dreams to Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002). Born as Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle in France but raised in New York, she moved back to Europe as a young adult, where she discovered her calling as an artist. She instantly became part of the avant-garde art scene in France.

She received numerous awards during her lifetime as well as the prestigious Praemium Imperial Prize in 2000, considered to be the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the art world.

Niki de Saint Phalle and her Diverse Body of Work

Book about the Tarot Garden

Whatever she did became an instant success. Her modeling career was short but plastered with covers of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Life Magazine before she was even 20.

She started to paint and already had her first one-women exhibition in 1956 in St.Gallen, Switzerland.

Her art found the way into museums very early on and she was honoured with her own museum in 1994 - solely dedicated to her work - The Niki Museum in Nasu, Japan

The Tarot Garden

She gave birth to life-size Nana's, the Skinnies and the Heroes - the later a homage to African-Americans. She designed in collaboration with her partner and later husband Jean Tinguely, a Swiss kinetic artist, Le Paradis Fantastique, commissioned by the French government for their Pavilion at the Expo '67 in Montreal that was later shown in many galleries, as well as at a sculpture-fountain for the Place Igor Stravinsky in Paris.

Kitchen in the Empress

She wrote plays for theaters; designed sets and costumes; worked with the Swiss Architect Mario Botta on Golem, a project for children in Jerusalem's Rabinovitch Park - Noah's Ark; wrote screenplays and produced films; designed jewelery, vases, chairs, lamps and a series of silk prints; wrote in collaboration with Dr. Silvio Barandun and illustrated the book: AIDS: You Can't Catch It Holding Hands, that later, in collaboration with her son, became a cartoon film; designed a swimming pool in Saint-Tropez; renovated a cave for the city of Hannover; designed an air plane; had many one-woman exhibitions around the world - all the while she created huge sculptures commissioned by various international cities that have become landmarks. Her latest project, a Sculpture Garden in San Diego, was finished after her death in 2002.

Antonio Gaudi and The Park Güell

Her real calling struck her like a lightening bolt, piercing her heart and activating her creative brain centre while visiting Barcelona and the works of the Catalan Architect Antonio Gaudi: "In 1955 I went to Barcelona. There I saw the beautiful Park Güell of Gaudi. I met both master and my destiny. I trembled all over. I knew that I was meant one day to build my own Garden of Joy."

The Tarot Garden
A Masterpiece and Testimony of Her Unique Art

Death

She met Marella Caracciolo-Agnelli again in Davos while recovering of a serious lung ailment, caused by years of working with polyester and giving her problems for the rest of her life. Telling her about her lifelong dream of building a Tarot Garden, Marella convinced her brothers - Carlo and Nicola Caracciolo - to donate a piece of heir property in Garavicchio-Capalbio in Tuscany, Italy.

Niki was in heaven: "I know that this is what I am born to do, that I was meant to do; I was meant to do a garden which would bring joy, where people could bring their children, where they could meditate."

She spent most of 1976 planning and pinning down a plan for the Tarot Garden to come. This massive project would take 20 years to finish.

Although the beginning of Tarot is unknown to this day - it was played in Egypt, India, and China as well as in Europe. The earliest known cards are displayed at the Bibliotheque National in Paris and - according to Stuart Kaplan - are of Venetian origin and dating back to the fifteenth-century.

The cards, called Trionfi (Triumphs) became known in the sixteenth century as Tarocchi, translated into the French as Tarot. Since each Tarot card was painted by reputable artists, only aristocrats could afford and were known to use them at that time.

It's only fitting that Niki de Saint Phalle was given a piece of land in Italy to build her Tarot Garden. Work began in 1978 when she started to line out the garden and make models of each figure - vibrant and playful - that would later populate her garden.

High Priestess with Magician

The actual backbreaking work began 1980 with her first sculptures of the 22 major arcana's - The Magician and The High Priestess - curved sculptural giants, made of welded wire, cement and polyester and painted in brilliant primary colour mosaics, and adorned with humorous details.

She moved permanently to Garavicchio in 1981; first into a small house close to the Tarot Garden, and later into the womb of The Empress - she made one breast her bedroom, the other one her kitchen; the latter eccentrically covered in dazzling glass mosaics.

The Lovers

Jean Tinguely and his team of welders, Sepp Imhof and Rico Weber, as well as local workers were employed to erect the monumental outdoor sculptures.

She started to work with ceramics in addition to mirrors and glass and so came closer to the work of her mentor Gaudi than ever before.

Venera Finocchiaro, an artist in her own right and ceramics teacher in Rome, produced all her ceramics locally. She transmitted the baroque profusion and delight in embellishment already shown in her Nana's to her Tarot figures in a brilliant array of colours. Jean not only constructed The Tower of Babel, but many other whimsical kinetic structures throughout the Tarot Garden.

After Jean Tinguely's death in 1991, she built her first kinetic sculpture in his honour, the Meta-Tinguely's. They gave each other support throughout their collaboration; he in his uncanny assistance, and she with vibrant colours, that gave Jeannot's playful but rusty scrap sculptures more life.

Her poor health was always a concern and she was plagued by severe bronchitis attacks especially during winter. In 1994, recommended by her doctor, she moved to the more moderate climate of California.

Inspired by California's history she began a new Sculptural Garden in Escondido, California - the Queen Califa's Magical Circle, finished after her death by her granddaughter and long-time assistant - Bloum Cardenas - and opened in October 2003.

Good to Know

Address
Giardino dei Tarocchi
Pescia Fiorentina
Caravicchio-Capalbio, 58100
Provincia de Grosseto - Italy

Tel.: ++0564 895122
Email for Group Reservations

Open
1. April - 15 October
2:30 pm - 7:30 pm

Specials
January to March and November to December
The first Saturday in the month, from 9am to 1pm, the park's founder Niki de Saint Phalle has decided to grant all visitors free entry. If this saturday falls on a public holiday, the Giardino will open the following Saturday

Info

• Niki de Saint Phalle's Tarot Cards in her own words
• Niki de Saint Phalle's Foundation
• Niki de Saint Phalle's work at the Place des Arts, Paris
• Niki e Saint Phalle's Installations and Public Work
• The Niki Museum in Nasu, Japan

• 197 km to Firenze
• 128 km to Siena
• 450 km to Venezia
• 484 km to Milano
• 531 km to Torino
• 140 km to Roma
• 54 km to Grosseto