Niki de Saint Phalle
Due to a traumatic childhood and various other life experiences, Niki de Saint Phalle had a tendency to at first create work that was considered angry and violent. Most of her pieces were colorful and bright, sometimes haphazard, and with no formal training she became one of the few women known for her monumental sculptures. She had many tumultuous relationships with those close to her, and these emotions often bled over to her work.
The Death of the Patriarch is a piece from her famous Tirs, or shooting-paintings. Saint Phalle had observed a large all white piece by a fellow artist, and had the urge to make it bleed. This thought alone took the idea of an artwork as it was, and added an almost human quality to it, as well as emotions. To create such works, Saint Phalle would plaster together objects into a form, and include paint cans that, when shot, would appear to make the piece ‘bleed’, or add a general sense of color to them. Obviously on this piece, most of the red originates from the area in which the heart would lie, indicating that the heart of the patriarch has burst. This also indicates that the image as a whole is ‘dead’, and as Saint Phalle shot the piece herself, it hints at assassination. As this obviously can be related directly to killing the patriarchy and the oppression women experienced, this can also be taken as a way for Saint Phalle to make an artistic stand against her father, who she later announced had abused her from the age of 11. With one piece, she was able to capture many of the emotions women felt at the time, as well as those she had grown up with and continued to deal with her entire life.