[10] Her books and abundant correspondence were written and brightly-colored in a childish style, but throughout her lifetime she addressed many controversial and important global problems in the bold way children often use to question and call out unacceptable neglect.

In her later years, she suffered from multiple chronic health problems attributed to repeated exposure to airborne glass fibers and petrochemical fumes from the experimental materials she had used in her pioneering artworks, but she continued to create prolifically until the end of her life.

[17][18] Another cousin was the American-born investment banker, lawyer, and former Office of Strategic Services agent Thibaut de Saint Phalle, who served in the Carter administration as a director of the Export–Import Bank of the United States (1977-1981).

[20] Within months of her birth, her father's finance company closed, and her parents moved with her oldest brother to the suburbs of New York City; she was left with her maternal grandparents in Nièvre, near the geographical center of France.

[35] In 1959, Saint Phalle first encountered multiple artworks by Yves Klein, Marcel Duchamp, Daniel Spoerri, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns.

[6] Saint Phalle began to present variations on this process in art museums and galleries, and recruited other artists to join in staged public "happenings", where some of her colleagues would also pull the trigger.

[39][13] In August 1961, Marcel Duchamp introduced Saint Phalle and Tinguely to Salvador Dalí, who invited them to create a life-sized exploding bull with fireworks (Toro de Fuego).

In Los Angeles, she shot a large-scale King Kong assemblage she had constructed, paint-splattering the embedded sculpted faces of politicians such as John F Kennedy, Fidel Castro, and Charles De Gaulle, with Santa Claus and Donald Duck as well.

Saint Phalle unknowingly used dangerous fabrication and painting processes that released airborne glass fibers and chemicals, including styrene, epoxy, and toxic solvents.

During this show, she joined a type of tombola raffle organized by the Artist's Club of New York, whereby artworks were randomly left in coin-operated luggage lockers at Pennsylvania Station, and keys were offered for $10 each.

[20][27] In addition, the sprawling Nana contained a coin telephone, a love-seat sofa, a museum of fake paintings, a sandwich vending machine, an art installation by Ultvedt, and a playground slide for children.

[13] In 1967, she exhibited Le Paradis Fantastique ("The Fantastic Paradise"), a collaborative grouping of nine of her sculptures with six machines built by Tinguely, on the rooftop terrace of the 8-level French Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal.

[58][59] The composition was originally conceived of as an attack by Tinguely's dark mechanical constructions upon Saint Phalle's brightly-colored animals and female figures, a kind of "amorous warfare".

[24]: 110 From 1969 to 1971, she worked on her first full-scale architecture project, three small sculptural houses commissioned by Rainer von Diez in southern France,[53][52]: 27  which she called Le Rêve de l'oiseau [fr] ("The Dream of the Bird").

[53][13] In 1973, Saint Phalle worked with Tinguely and Rico Weber on a commission from Roger and Fabienne Nellens to build a playhouse in the garden of their home in seaside Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium.

[67] In 1987, graffiti artist Keith Haring would live in Le Dragon while working on a mural commissioned by Roger Nellens at nearby Knokke Casino, and would return for at least three summers.

[13][81] In 1977, she worked with the English writer Constantin Mulgrave to design sets for The Traveling Companion, based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, but the project was never completed.

[53] In 1978, Saint Phalle started to lay out her sculpture garden in an abandoned quarry in Garavicchio, Tuscany, about 100 kilometres (62 mi) north-west of Rome near the west coast of the Italian peninsula.

[12] The structure of the more massive sculptures was very similar to the temporary Hon installation at the Moderna Museet in 1966, but this time the artworks were outdoors and needed to withstand the long-term weathering effects of sun and rain.

[81] Around 1983, Saint Phalle decided to cover her Tarot Garden sculptures primarily in durable ceramic colored tiles, adding shards of mirrors and glass, and polished stones.

[51] In 1992–1993, corrective maintenance on the Tarot Garden sculptures was performed, using new glues and silicones to attach mirrors and glass elements more securely, to withstand weathering and the touch of many visitors' hands.

[96] Saint Phalle's friend, architect Mario Botta, built a fortress-like protective wall and a porthole-shaped gateway at the entrance to the garden, marking a distinctive separation from the outside world.

[74] In her final years, Saint Phalle was afflicted with emphysema,[7] asthma,[7] and severe arthritis,[10][20] which she[82] and many commentators attributed to exposure to airborne glass fibers, fumes, and petrochemicals from materials used in her artworks.

[53] In 1998, she created a series of Black Heroes sculptures in honor of African-Americans who made major contributions to sports or jazz, including Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, and Josephine Baker.

[13] She also completed her series of 23 large animals for the Noah's Ark sculptural park at the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo with the assistance of her international team of artisans, and in collaboration with architect Mario Botta.

Throughout her career, Saint Phalle was outspoken in addressing important religious conflict, political, pandemic health, race, gender, reproductive rights, food security, climate change, and cultural issues of the time.

[70][114] Her enormous, curvaceous Nanas celebrated the fecund female form, featuring large breasts and buttocks, splayed limbs, joyous dance postures, and often, black skin.

[117] Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips cited Saint Phalle's sculpture Firebird as direct inspiration for the cover art of their hugely successful 2002 album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.

The Niki Charitable Art Foundation maintains an online map and catalog of all her extant public artworks, including a pizza oven in La Jolla, California.

[3] The Saint Phalle archives and artistic rights are held by the Niki Charitable Art Foundation (NCAF) in Santee, California, near San Diego, which became active upon her passing.