PAD Art + Design 2026: Pavillon des Arts et du Design

FOCUS ON THREE WOMEN ARTISTS

The Galerie Jean-François Cazeau, located in Paris' Marais district since 2009, builds bridges between the Modern Masters and post-war art on both sides of the Atlantic, while also embracing contemporary art. This year, it is once again participating in PAD Paris at the Tuileries, from April 8 to 12, offering a selection of works highlighting the work of three female artists close to the pop art movement: Dominique Fury (born in 1956), Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002), and Yayoi Kusama (born in 1929), while remaining true to its characteristic eclecticism.

The presentation focuses on these three female artists who express the same enthusiasm for colorful and expressive worlds, rich in colors and shapes. Their visual language transcends the boundaries of art, pop culture, and commerce, addressing major themes such as art and consumption, life and death, and sexuality.
The world of Dominique Fury, an artist from the French neo-pop and punk movement and member of the Bazooka collective in the 1970s, is permeated by powerful and rebellious female figures. The artist uses screen printing on various media, including synthetic fur. Her series of cyber pussies, several of which are on display at the stand, represents a “feminine (and feminist) response to Courbet's L'Origine du monde.” Like Niki de Saint Phalle, Fury approaches design through pieces of furniture, using Plexiglas and metal, where her silkscreen prints on fur can come to life and interact with viewers.

Breaking down the boundaries between art and everyday life, Niki de Saint Phalle began creating actual furniture sculptures in the 1980s. Always rooted in the artist's imagination, her powerful and colorful Nanas can thus become vases or conversation chairs (a form borrowed from early 19th-century furniture), sometimes surrounded by totemic snakes. Beginning her artistic career in the vibrant New York scene in the late 1950s, Yayoi Kusama is an artist on the borderline between post-war abstraction and contemporary art. In her Uchu (Universe) series, which preceded her Infinity Nets, the artist uses motifs that cover the entire pictorial surface uniformly and seem to continue behind the canvas.

These three artists are very much in the news, particularly since 2025, the year that saw the opening of several important exhibitions dedicated to them: the Niki de Saint Phalle - Jean Tinguely retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris; Niki de Saint Phalle. Le bestiaire magique at Caumont - Centre d'Art in Aix-en-Provence; Jean Dubuffet & Niki de Saint Phalle, Chassés croisés at the Fondation Dubuffet in Paris. Niki de Saint Phalle is associated with Yayoi Kusama and Takashi Murakami at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover and has her own retrospective at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, then at the Ludwig Museum and the Stedelijk Museum. Three works by Dominique Fury are on display at La Piscine in Roubaix, as part of the exhibition agnès b. on aime le graff !! (agnès b. we love graffiti!!), presenting a selection of works from the agnès b. Collection. Fury has a long-standing collaboration with this major figure in contemporary art, exhibiting regularly at the galerie du jour agnès b. since the 1980s.

This focus on female artists is complemented by works by other artists, including Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), who also combined art with utility in the Madoura workshop in Vallauris between 1947 and 1971 - Picasso used the shapes of Madoura pottery (vases, plates, jugs) to transform them into artistic and anthropomorphic subjects; and Vincent Poujardieu (born in 1963), whose furniture and lighting defy the laws of balance. A monumental relief by Giuseppe Penone, a leading representative of arte povera, shows how plant forms can inspire art, opening up a dialogue with the natural world. A selection of pieces by post-war masters such as Yves Klein and César, members of the Nouveau Réalisme movement, Zao Wou-Ki, and Chu Teh-Chun are also on display.