Nico Icon

Her career began as a model for Chanel and as an actress in Fellini's films, but the young woman and Sixties icon Nico wanted to be more than just a pretty face, so she turned to music. As the singer of The Velvet Underground, she also achieved cult status. Afterward, she not only began writing her own music, but, scarred by drug use, she did everything in her power to gradually destroy her image of ethereal beauty. Just as she was being rediscovered in the 1990s as a pioneer of punk and gothic, she died in Mallorca. To this day, she is surrounded by the aura of an enigmatic sphinx. Indeed, melancholy and nihilism have never sounded and shone so darkly as in the songs of Christa Päffgen, who set out to transform herself into Nico. (E.S.)