NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE (FRENCH-AMERICAN 1930-2002) ⊕ REMEMBER signed Niki de Saint Phalle and numbered 54/100 lower right screenprint in colours on wove paper 50 x 61.3cm; 19 3/4 x 24 1/4in unframed Property from the Estate of Alexander Iolas Executed in 1969. Works from the Estate of Alexander Iolas by Jean Hugo and Nikki de Saint Phalle (lots 44-52)Introduction Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Alexander Iolas (1908-1987) was a renowned art dealer, gallerist and collector of both classical and modern art whose extraordinary influence made a seismic impact on the New York art scene and internationally between the 1950s and 1980s.As a young man Iolas defied family expectations of following in the path of his father to become a cotton dealer, instead he travelled widely throughout Europe pursuing a career in ballet before turning his attention to the arts. In 1935 he arrived in New York and launched himself into the city’s growing art scene as the manager of Hugo Gallery on East 55th Street. Founded by Elizabeth Arden alongside Robert Rothschild, the gallery gained a reputation for Surrealist art after Iolas staged a pivotal exhibition of new work by Max Ernst, Dorothea Tanning and René Magritte in 1947.Five years later Iolas mounted the landmark show of the yet undiscovered artist Andy Warhol, staging his artistic debut Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote in 1952 and propelling the young American artist to stardom. Iolas and Warhol subsequently worked extensively together, with Iolas credited for commissioning one of Warhol’s final print epics Last Supper of 1986. Iolas also introduced the work of Ed Ruscha to the gallery, shepherding both his reputation and his market. In 1955, in partnership with Brooks Jackson, Iolas established his own independent gallery franchise across Paris, Milan, Rome, Geneva, Madrid and Athens.Famous for his bombastic claims and often amusing opinions (once dismissing Balthus and Cy Twombly as terrible painters in the same breath), Iolas’ professional achievements are often interchangeable with extraordinary stories of a legend formed in part of his own making. His eye was informed by intuition rather than institution, his theatrical nature inextricably linked to his professional undertakings. Speaking to art historian Maurice Rheims in 1965, Iolas stated: 'I don’t consider a gallery as a commercial occupation. It’s purely artistic… it’s a show in which the audience members are the dancers, and the scenery is made by the painter. The present lot together with lots 48-52 executed between 1968-1970 depict Saint Phalle's idiosyncratic style characterised by vibrant colours and a youthful spirit, works that have been included in what has been called 'outsider art' as she did not receive an academic training. The works portray numerous characters with quotations and annotations that shed insight into the artist's deeply personal state of mind as she navigates heartbreak and reproductive health. The works later informed Saint Phalle's illustrated book AIDS: You Can’t Catch It Holding Hands of 1986, an important work that delivers life-saving healthcare information about the transmission of HIV through colourful cartoons in an attempt to destigmatise the disease. Saint Phalle was a self-taught avant-gardist, one of the late twentieth century’s great creative personalities, with traits that once clouded and now halo her importance. First dominated by feminist rage, the artist’s creative direction eventually moved away from an epoch of destruction to a period typified by the celebration of womanhood through sculptures of female bodies, often immense, in fibreglass and polyester resin. Her work reached its zenith in such monumental outdoor projects such as Dragon for the son of Roger Nellens, at Knokke-le-Zoute created in the early 1970s in collaboration with her long term creative and romantic partner Jean Tinguely (1925-1991), and The Tarot Garden, a sculpture garden in Pescia Fiorentina, Tuscany featuring twenty-two monumental figures inspired by Guadi's Parc Güell in Barcelona, that opened in 1998.