François-Xavier Lalanne

François-Xavier Lalanne 1927 Agen/Lot-et-Garonne - 2008 Ury/Seine-et-Marne François-Xavier Lalanne, equally highly regarded as a visual artist and as a designer and part of the duo "Les Lalanne", which he forms with his wife Claude Lalanne, was born on August 28, 1927 in Agen in Gascony. At the age of 18 he went to Paris and attended the Académie Julian from 1945. In 1949 François-Xavier Lalanne rented his own studio in the Impasse Ronsin, the famous studio estate in the middle of the Montparnasse district that had existed since the end of the 19th century. His neighbor was Constantin Brancusi, and Jean Tinguely also lived and worked here. In 1952, François-Xavier Lalanne met the sculptor Claude Dupeux, his future wife, at his first solo exhibition in Paris. In the creative environment of Impasse Ronsin, François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne turn to the design of metal sculptures; together with Jean Tinguely and James Metcalf, for example, they buy a welding machine, and the first of their hybrid animal sculptures are created. François-Xavier Lalanne and Claude Lalanne worked as an inspiring creative duo, but each produced independent works of art. Influenced by Surrealism François-Xavier Lalanne draws and designs hybrid animal figures that are half animal, half furniture or utensil. They sometimes seem to have sprung from the mind of Salvador Dalí or Max Ernst and reveal their closeness to the Parisian Surrealists. Thus the famous "Moutons de Laine," pleasing sheep sculptures that François-Xavier Lalanne "dresses" with wool, also serve as comfortable stools. Or the propped sculpture of a pike ("Brochet," 1973) conceals a delicate storage box inside. Another fish sculpture is actually intended to be a letter opener. In 1968/69, he created "Hippopotame I," an object in the form of a voluminous hippopotamus with a bathtub inside its belly. The "Rhinocrétaire" made of patinated bronze is a rhinoceros sculpture and secretary furniture in one. Function follows form here. Giving the sculpture a function: playing with words, form and material These are highly aesthetic objects in masterly executed craftsmanship that François-Xavier Lalanne conceives and that appeal to the extravagant and sophisticated taste of an illustrious public. But they also express the great love of nature, the delicate passion for beauty, fantasy, wordplay and poetry of surrealism that unites the couple "Les Lalanne". In 1964, the gallerist Jeanine Restany dedicates the exhibition "Zoophites" to these objects in her gallery J in Paris. The works of François-Xavier Lalanne and his wife also came to the attention of the gallerist Alexander Iolas, who exhibited them in Paris and in the United States, where they also met with an enthusiastic public. The works of François-Xavier Lalanne and his wife Claude Lalanne are now in numerous private collections, having been collected by Yves Saint Laurent, Tom Ford, Karl Lagerfeld, Hubert de Givenchy and François Mitterrand. They are also kept in the most prestigious museums worldwide, such as the Musée National d'Art Moderne/Centre Georges Pompidou, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, or the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris. In 2010, the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris dedicated a major retrospective to the life's work of François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne. In addition to the sculptural, an extensive graphic oeuvre of François-Xavier Lalanne emerges. François-Xavier Lalanne died on December 7, 2008 in Ury, Département Seine-et-Marne. His wife Claude Lalanne passes away in 2019.