Of rigid sculpted gilt bronze with textured leaf design

Metal: gilt bronze
Signature: CLANANNE
Marks: ARTCURIAL 36/100
Size/Dimensions: approximately 35.8 cm inner circumference, 4.5 cm at widest point
Gross Weight: 286.0

One of the most dynamic husband-and-wife duos of the 20th century, François-Xavier (1927–2008) and Claude Lalanne (1924–2019) ushered in a renewed interest in nature and the organic. Les Lalanne, as they became known collectively, crafted a distinctive blend of fine and decorative arts based on naturalistic forms, which is highly prized by contemporary collectors.

Claude Lalanne was a French sculptor and designer revered for her electroplated furniture and jewelry. Over the course of their long marriage Les Lalanne often worked together, but in very different styles. They rarely collaborated on individual pieces; François-Xavier’s creations were more often inspired by the animal kingdom while Claude favored the botanical. They were, however, united in their love for the surreal and in the humor they brought to their fine and decorative art.

After her husband’s death in 2008, Claude continued to make her inimitable jewelry from the house in Ury, just south of Paris, that they had shared for over five decades. Natural forms such leaves or flowers were bathed in copper sulphate with a current running through it, making the copper cling to the organic material to create a perfect replica. Yves Saint Laurent said he was moved by Claude’s ‘ability to unite craftsmanship and poetry with equal depth’.

Their work appears in major collections including the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York, the Museé Nationale d’Art Moderne/Centre Georges Pompidou, the Museé d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, the City of Paris, the City of Santa Monica, and the City of Jerusalem.
In a recent tribute to the couple, French President Emmanuel Macron said ‘they invented a world of cabbage-headed men, hippopotamus-tubs, a rhinoceros-secretary, snail-fingers, apples-with-mouths melting into a unique alloy and kneading together the imagination, humour and poetry — so many works that re-enchant the familiar and the functional, while injecting into the substance of contemporary life a bit of fairy tales’ dreamlike madness and nature’s sublime disorder.’