Artist of the day: Artists of the Day, May 18, 2022: Claude & François-Xavier Lalanne, French sculptor and installation artists (#1572)

Since the 1960s, Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne have created parallel oeuvres full of humour and poetry on the themes of animals and nature, yet working each with their own modus operandi. Their sculptural vocabulary is made up of surreal combinations, such as the Pomme-bouche [Mouth-apple], the Choupatte [Cabbage with legs], the Gorille de Sûreté [Security Gorilla] or the Rhinocrétaire [Rhinodesk]; it demonstrates the great creativity and imagination they have developed throughout their careers. Claude Lalanne's style is driven by her ornamental and baroque spirit, though keeping this intuition free from the technical constraints it requires. As for François-Xavier, his works include a mischievous bestiary bearing aloof attitudes, placing his sculptural work in line with that of 20th-century artists like Pompon or Brancusi. The Lalanne's both have their own production, their own workshop and their own techniques. Claude uses electroplating, a technique that congeals natural forms, which she can instinctively transform into sculptures, tables, chairs, benches or mirrors. François-Xavier's technique of hammered metal enabled him to combine the elegance of the drawing to the rigor of forms.

Claude Lalanne (1924–2019) was born in Paris, she lives and works in Ury. Carrying on her husband’s legacy, in 2013, Claude installed a piece at a former Getty gas station in Chelsea, New York, which she turned into a pasture populated by François Xavier’s sheep. Today, their works are held in the collections of the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

François-Xavier Lalanne (1927-2008) was born in Ageny. He was a French sculptor and installation artist, he studied painting at the Académie Julian before turning to sculpture; he worked with Claude from the mid-1950s onwards. For a long time, they collaborated with gallery owner Alexandre Iolas; they began working with the Galerie Mitterrand in the early 1990s and together have organized over a dozen exhibitions. Thanks to the great success of the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé sale, the public discovered the important place that the Lalanne couple occupied among the masterpieces gathered by the two collectors during their lifetime. In 2010, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs of Paris curated a retrospective of their oeuvres. Their works have also been shown in many group exhibitions, such as Decorum, tapis et tapisseries d'artistes [Artist decorum, carpets and tapestries] (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2013 and Power Station of Art in Shanghai, 2014).

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