FINANCIAL TIMES
Street Cred
The artful sculptural oeuvre of Claude and her late husband Francois-Xavier Lalanne is about to go on display on Park Avenue, Manhattan. From September 13, eight of the French couple's monumental sculptures, including a riotous copper and bronze cabbage sporting chicken feet and a flock of 12 bronze sheep, will make up the first large outdoor Lalanne exhibition in the US...
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
Lalannes on Park
A life-size flock of sheep and, appropriately, a big apple more than eight feet tall are coming to Park Avenue this fall, along with a bronze bunny, a seated monkey and a giant owl, the work of the French artists Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne. Although they were married 41 years, the two largely worked independently of each other. Now, from Sept. 13 through Nov. 20, their animal menagerie will adorn the meridians between 52nd and 57th Streets...
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NEW YORK OBSERVER
The Odd Couple
As elements of modern design and architecture invade the auction houses and museums as never before, it is a truly apt time to review the contributions of Francois-Xaver and Claude Lalanne. The husband - and - wife team has worked together and seperately for five decades to create sculpture...
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DEPARTURES
Origin of Their Species
Although Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne are two of the art world's most original designer-sculptors, until quite recently they were among its best-kept secrets. The French husband and wife have worked side by side for more than half a century, often collaborating, making art that is harmonious and complementary without losing their individuality.
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FINANCIAL TIMES
House and Home: Where Furniture and Sculpture Meet
Two-and-a-half millennia ago, wealthy Romans favoured cast bronze beds, often embedded with copper and silver, for the sleeping quarters of their palatial frescoed villas. The Greeks had bronze tripods on feline feet for lamps and incense burners along with beds and footstools, and, even earlier, from the 13th-century BC, the most lavish Cypriot homes were decorated with functional metal pieces.
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V MAGAZINE
New Decor
The rules of contemporary interior design and decoration seem to suggest that anything whiter, slicker, harder, and cleaner is the only way to go. Surely it's infinitely more nuanced than a gold-painted crocodile skin stool or a cast-iron monkey-shaped fireplace. But for the past fifty years, the sculptor/industrial designer husband-and-wife pair of Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne have gone against the Eames/Moss/Wallpaper/IKEA-driven grain by creating figurative objet d'arts...
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TIME OUT NEW YORK
Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne
Parisian decorative artists Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne rose to prominence in the 1960s with functional objects that combined the bohemian spirit of Bloomsbury with the strange imagery of Surrealism. At Kasmin, the Lalannes' smaller works resemble bronze characters attending a costumbe ball in a scene dreamed by Dali.
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ART + AUCTION
Animal Instincts
In his aerie of an office overlooking the Hudson River, Reed Krakoff has a desk surrounded by woolly sheep. Standing in a corner is a chair with a back in the shape of a smallish crocodile cast in bronze. And as one might expect from a man who, besides being executive creative director of Coach, is one of the most avid and informed collectors of 20th-century decorative and fine arts, there are sculptures by Louise Nevelson and Tony Smith, a painting by Alexander Liberman, a limited-edition aluminum table designed by Marc Newson and two rare 1940 chairs by Andre Arbus.
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TIME
L: Lalanne
A bronze bench with a crocodile back, a cast-iron stove in the belly of a monkey, wooden chairs in the shape of birds: these are just some of the creations by Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne, the French couple known for their animal-motif sculptures and furniture.
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NEW YORK MAGAZINE
The Best Bet
Swooping lines and organic curves - hallmarks of the Arts and Crafts design movment from the turn of the century - are on the rise as spare modernity wanes. One current example: the opulent, often utilitarian sculptures of contemporary sculptors Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne, which are unmistakably modern but recall Art Nouveau in all its sinuous glory.
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DEPARTURES
Collector's Item
The rabid following of French art couple Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne grew exponentially with the introduction of their sheep chair. More installation than furniture, collectors are buying them in flocks - James Zemaitis, director of Sotheby's 20th-century design, sold one for $150,000.
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W MAGAZINE
Two of a Kind
A life-size, cast-iron baboon that hides a fireplace in its belly... a bronze bench with crocodiles slithering through its legs... garden chairs shaped like giant turtledoves. Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne's creations mix art with design, function with fantasy. Over the course of their 40-year career, the husband and wife, who live and work in a rambling farmhouse outside of Paris, have built a following that includes fashion royals...
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INTERIOR DESIGN
Vive Lalanne
Stalwarts of French 1960's chic, Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne occasionally get lumped together when conversation turns to the sheep sculptures and furniture that Francois-Xavier made on his own.
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ELLE DECOR
Winning Combination
Take the life-size sheep that graze on a verdant David Hicks carpet next to a Louis XVI settee in the living room. Produced in 1965 by the French artist and designer Francois-Xavier Lalanne, the wooly ewes were favorites of the French fashion crowd: Yves Saint Laurent was famously photographed sitting on one, and Coco Chanel kept hers in the living room. As their wont with the living designers whose work they own, the Krakoffs have become friendly with Lalanne and his wife, Claude.
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THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE
Living Treasures
For more than four decades, the French husband-and-wife artists Francois-Xavier and Claude Lalanne have charmed the art and style glitterati with their whimsical, sensual sculptures. Francois-Xavier's famous bronze-and-wool sheep and donkey or rhinoceros desks, and Claude's botanical-inspired furniture and flatware, are elegantly oblivious of the boundaries between fine and decorative art.
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HOUSE AND GARDEN