In 1961, Clarice Rivers and her husbandnustabet gaming, Larry Rivers, the outlandish proto-Pop artist and jazz musician, spent nearly a year in Paris, living on the Impasse Ronsin, a tiny cul-de-sac and artist’s enclave that was home to Yves Klein, Niki de Saint Phalle and her husband, Jean Tinguely, the Swiss-born sculptor of kinetic, self-destructing contraptions.

There, Ms. Rivers, an effervescent Welsh expatriate, and Ms. de Saint Phalle became fast friends. At the time, Ms. de Saint Phalle was known for her “shooting” paintings — pieces embedded with bags of paint that she would blast with a rifle so they would explode in a spectacular fashion. But her work changed dramatically when she saw a drawing Mr. Rivers had made of his pregnant wife.

Her voluptuous form inspired Ms. de Saint Phalle to make what would become her most enduring work, the Nanas — “nana” is the French equivalent of “broad” or “chick” — bulbous and boldly painted female figures that look like a cross between the Venus of Willendorf and a Mexican piñata.

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In 1966, when Ms. de Saint Phalle built her first large-scale piece, a house-size Nana that she called “Hon” — the Swedish word for “her” — in a museum in Stockholm, she installed a milk bar in her breast and a theater in one arm. Visitors entered through her vagina. In a letter to Ms. Rivers, Ms. de Saint Phalle boasted that a psychiatrist had written in a newspaper that “the Hon would change people’s dreams for years to come.”

ImageMs. de Saint Phalle’s first large-scale Nana, called “Hon,” was exhibited at a museum in Stockholm in 1966. It was a collaboration with her husband, Jean Tinguely, and the Finnish sculptor Per Olof Ultvedt.Credit...Gai Terrell/Redferns, via Getty ImagesImageMs. Rivers, left, and Ms. de Saint Phalle in the 1980s.Credit...via Rivers family

Ms. Rivers, the exuberant muse who inspired Ms. de Saint Phalle as well as her husband, died on Aug. 22 in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. She was 88.

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