In 1973, in the Belgian seaside resort of Knokke-le-Zoute on the North Sea, artists Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely built Dragon for the son of Roger Nellens, a collector, painter and patron.
Born in 1930 to a French father and an American mother, Saint Phalle had a captivating beauty and offbeat elegance, along with a brooding temperament. In her late teens, she started working as a model in New York, but moved to Paris in the 1950s. It was there that she took her fledgling steps towards becoming an artist, informed by encounters with César, Yves Klein, Christo and Jeanne-Claude. By now, however, she was also exhibiting signs of poor mental health, traumatised by childhood abuse and manic depression, leading to a psychiatric hospital in 1953. She spent the time painting: it was ‘where I learned how to translate my feelings, fears, violence, hope and joy’, she later said. Afterwards, she developed a sculpting career.
In 1956, she met artist Jean Tinguely, a partner (and, from 1971, husband) with whom she would co-create some of her most powerful sculptures. They started with ‘Nanas’, which were considered controversial in their time and propelled her into the contemporary-art world. Made from a mix of materials, evolving from papier-mâché or wool to incorporate wire mesh, polyester, painted plaster and more, these nude giantesses sometimes reached such a size you could step inside them by sneaking between their open legs. With skin painted in black or pink, they dance and kick their legs up into the air. They’re joyful figures dressed in playful colours, far removed from stereotypes, alive with a wild violence, questioning a woman’s place in life. We were in the 1960s, at the dawn of feminism; but Saint Phalle was fighting for all minorities.
In 1972, having completed several monumental works, fountains and sculpture houses, she built her Golem, a huge monster head, comprising two levels, in the city of Jerusalem. It sticks out three tongues, which are actually slides for children to play on. Shortly after this came the Dragon, sharing a similar aesthetic to the Golem, but with a body some 33.5m long and 7m wide and a tail that winds its way far out into the garden of its patron, Roger Nellens. He had originally intended it to be a playhouse for his son, Xavier, but for the artist the project took on a far greater magnitude. ‘The monster represents my inner nature, instinctive and untameable. It fascinates and terrifies me,’ Saint Phalle revealed. ‘It is my predator and the link that binds me to my destiny.’
Although she designed the piece and created detailed models, it was Tinguely and artist Rico Weber who welded the underlying structure together. Like engineers, the men constructed a metal frame of iron rods on to which they poured cement, a process taking several months. They worked nights and through the winter, using car headlights for lighting, sending sparks flying as they toiled.
Like Golem, Dragon has two floors. On the upper storey there is a bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette, while on the ground floor is the playhouse proper. Saint Phalle also asked Tinguely to custom-make the furniture as well as a rather sinister-looking scrap-metal ‘masterpiece’ to light the space, a piece that befuddled the collector’s friends. Once the beast had been given its white plaster hide, Saint Phalle enlisted a makeshift team of assistants (including Roger Nellens) to help paint in the images she’d outlined on its surface – flowers, strange animals, songbirds, weeping women, octopuses, snakes and multicoloured lice – in the ebullient spirit of the decorations for her Nanas. She also asked all the family friends and children who regularly visited Nellens’s house to add some of their own scribbles, which explains how racing driver Jacky Ickx ended up adding an illustration of his own car to the outer walls.
Dragon investor Roger Nellens had always lived in an artistic milieu. His grandparents headed the Belgian dynasty that created Knokke-le-Zoute. At the turn of the 20th century, the smartest destination on the North Sea was Ostende. But in 1928, Joseph Nellens bought 250 hectares of sand dunes populated only by rabbits. He built a lake, a casino and a hotel. These became the heart of the resort, which soon rivalled Saint-Tropez.
His son, Gustave, wanted to study law but was forced by his father to work in the casino, beloved by the rich and famous of the time. He was astute enough, however, to also embrace the art world, becoming the patron of painter Paul Delvaux. He showcased the likes of Belgian artists Léon Spilliaert and James Ensor; he exhibited the work of the Surrealists at the casino and asked them to decorate the walls. Magritte was commissioned to produce a huge mural for the gaming room.
In his dynasty’s third generation, Roger Nellens’s future seemed to be preordained, but he longed for independence and launched a large-scale poultry-farming venture. That ended in disaster, but eventually he moved into the world of painting and patronage.
Through his father’s casino (which he ran with his brother Jacques) and hotel he met the likes of Picasso, Matisse, Marlene Dietrich (WoI Feb 2022) and Ava Gardner, and rubbed shoulders with notable artists. His house next door, the Fort Saint-Paul estate, was never short of guests, and it came as no surprise when he became acquainted with Saint Phalle and Jean.
His daughter from a previous marriage, Sylvianne, visited her father’s house every Sunday. Nine years old when Roger commissioned the Dragon for her half-brother Xavier, then just three, she recalls the construction as a never-ending party: ‘Inside, we had a little shop with scales and weights to weigh our wares. We had a huge dress-up box. I would turn into a fairy and fight everyone with my magic wand. We’d chase each other up and down the tail, where it was totally dark. There were sections where you had to crouch, acting scared, then escape through a little door!’
Ten years later, Keith Haring, who had been commissioned by the patron to complete a work in the casino, took residency in the dragon and asked Saint Phalle's permission to paint the staircase. Sylvianne, who was celebrating her 18th birthday at the Dragon at the time – complete with fireworks and an orchestra – got to know Keith very well. He would jump on the trampoline and play non-stop with the children, painting their T-shirts and trainers and anything else he could find. ‘I still have my customised jeans,’ recalls Sylvianne, who remained close with Keith up until his death from AIDs shortly after.
Around the same time, and inspired by a visit to Parc Güell in Barcelona and another to see the monsters of the Garden of Bomarzo (an Italian Mannerist park full of grotesque animal sculptures), Saint Phalle travelled to Tuscany to pursue her ambitious Tarot Garden project, another sculpture garden, which would be 30 years in the making. She went on to build 22 ‘houses’ herein, one for each of the Major Arcana found in tarot – the Magician, the Hanged Man, the Devil and so on – sleeping on site in a small apartment built into the Empress, a house-sized, sphinx-like sculpture in the garden. After completing this exhausting project, in 1994 she published a book in the form of a letter to her daughter, My Secret, in which she revealed she had been a victim of incest.
By this point Saint Phalle was more than 60 years old and ready to start a more peaceful work, Grotto (‘Cave’), built on 17th-century ruins in the German city of Hanover. Its three rooms represented the night, the cosmos and spirituality. She started work in 2001 but, sadly, was unable to see it through to completion: the following year she died, having contracted a lung infection caused by toxic chemicals in her materials.
Visit nikidesaintphalle.org
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