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Lot Essay
The work of Claude Lalanne is today celebrated across the world, frequently in conjunction with that of her late husband Francois-Xavier Lalanne, with whom she exhibited together under the joint name of Les Lalanne for over 40 years. This collective name hides the fact that, despite decades of sharing adjacent studios and exhibiting together across the globe during that time, each enjoyed their own artistic vision with a distinctive oeuvre. Unlike Francois-Xavier’s fascination with the playful form, scale and function of animals, Claude’s work has an altogether more sinuous and organic form, incorporating flora and fauna in a manner that is reminiscent of Art Nouveau, with a delicate infusion of surrealism and fantasy.
The couple met in 1952 and gradually made a name for themselves on the Parisian scene, working on various interior design projects, including window displays for Christian Dior, allowing them to hone their range of production techniques. They moved into a small studio on the Impasse Ronsin, now recognised as a legendary community of artists in Montparnasse, where they moved in an eclectic artistic microcosm that included Constantin Brancusi (a major inspiration and friend), Max Ernst, René Magritte, Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint-Phalle, amongst many others. Although Les Lalanne mixed with the Nouveau Realiste group, they did not adhere to the group’s manifesto, steadfastly retaining their artistic independence and vision. After their first “joint solo show” at Jeanine Goldschmidt and Pierre Restany’s Galerie J in Paris in 1964, they began a long-standing collaboration with the legendary gallerist Alexander Iolas in 1966. Over the following years the couple exhibited globally through Iolas’s international network of galleries and with others, forming a poetic, playful fantasy world which garnered, and continues to attract, admiration from a range of seminal collectors and patrons.
Of their most important patrons, none was more central, and long-standing, to Les Lalanne than their great friends Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. Saint Laurent had first met François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne in the 1950s when he was decorating the Dior boutique at 15 rue François Ier. In 1965, by now running his own eponymous haute couture house with Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent commissioned François-Xavier to produce his seminal 1965 ‘Bar YSL’, which would first occupy his apartment on Place Vauban overlooking the Invalides, before being moved to his library in his rue de Babylone apartment. It was following this, in 1969, that Saint Laurent commissioned Claude to make a series of body casts of the waist, wrist and bust of his famed model muse Veruschka for his Autumn/Winter collection, that were worn with two diaphanous chiffon dresses, one blue and the other black. Claude went on to produce a number of sculptural accessories and jewellery for Yves Saint Laurent in galvanic copper, using a method which she discovered through American artist James Metcalf in 1956, using electrolysis to coat objects in a thin layer of metal. From this first commission, Saint Laurent then went on to ask Claude Lalanne to design and produce an important series of mirrors with which to line the walls of his Music Room in his rue de Babylone apartment. From the first pair, delivered in 1974, to the last mirror finally installed in 1985, this commission of what was to be fifteen mirrors became one of Claude’s most famous creations and one which, when the group came to be sold upon the death of Saint Laurent in the landmark collection auction at Christie’s Paris in 2009, set a new world record for her work which still stands today (€1.86m).
In 1990, Saint Laurent again commissioned Claude Lalanne to produce a pair of candelabra, the present lot. Illustrated here in situ in rue de Babylone before Claude’s famed wall mirrors, and placed in pride of place on top of the Eileen Gray sideboard of 1915-1917, these candelabra were produced by Claude in a unique edition of just this pair, and numbered accordingly. A notable part of her Structure Végétale series of works, which includes chandeliers and mirrors, the present lot are arguably the most important examples of the model ever produced, being a direct commission by one of the world’s greatest art collectors of the 20th century directly from the artist whose work so inspired and moved him.
Christie's would like to thank Mrs Claude Lalanne and the Lalanne workshop for their assistance with the cataloguing of the present lot.
The couple met in 1952 and gradually made a name for themselves on the Parisian scene, working on various interior design projects, including window displays for Christian Dior, allowing them to hone their range of production techniques. They moved into a small studio on the Impasse Ronsin, now recognised as a legendary community of artists in Montparnasse, where they moved in an eclectic artistic microcosm that included Constantin Brancusi (a major inspiration and friend), Max Ernst, René Magritte, Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint-Phalle, amongst many others. Although Les Lalanne mixed with the Nouveau Realiste group, they did not adhere to the group’s manifesto, steadfastly retaining their artistic independence and vision. After their first “joint solo show” at Jeanine Goldschmidt and Pierre Restany’s Galerie J in Paris in 1964, they began a long-standing collaboration with the legendary gallerist Alexander Iolas in 1966. Over the following years the couple exhibited globally through Iolas’s international network of galleries and with others, forming a poetic, playful fantasy world which garnered, and continues to attract, admiration from a range of seminal collectors and patrons.
Of their most important patrons, none was more central, and long-standing, to Les Lalanne than their great friends Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé. Saint Laurent had first met François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne in the 1950s when he was decorating the Dior boutique at 15 rue François Ier. In 1965, by now running his own eponymous haute couture house with Pierre Bergé, Yves Saint Laurent commissioned François-Xavier to produce his seminal 1965 ‘Bar YSL’, which would first occupy his apartment on Place Vauban overlooking the Invalides, before being moved to his library in his rue de Babylone apartment. It was following this, in 1969, that Saint Laurent commissioned Claude to make a series of body casts of the waist, wrist and bust of his famed model muse Veruschka for his Autumn/Winter collection, that were worn with two diaphanous chiffon dresses, one blue and the other black. Claude went on to produce a number of sculptural accessories and jewellery for Yves Saint Laurent in galvanic copper, using a method which she discovered through American artist James Metcalf in 1956, using electrolysis to coat objects in a thin layer of metal. From this first commission, Saint Laurent then went on to ask Claude Lalanne to design and produce an important series of mirrors with which to line the walls of his Music Room in his rue de Babylone apartment. From the first pair, delivered in 1974, to the last mirror finally installed in 1985, this commission of what was to be fifteen mirrors became one of Claude’s most famous creations and one which, when the group came to be sold upon the death of Saint Laurent in the landmark collection auction at Christie’s Paris in 2009, set a new world record for her work which still stands today (€1.86m).
In 1990, Saint Laurent again commissioned Claude Lalanne to produce a pair of candelabra, the present lot. Illustrated here in situ in rue de Babylone before Claude’s famed wall mirrors, and placed in pride of place on top of the Eileen Gray sideboard of 1915-1917, these candelabra were produced by Claude in a unique edition of just this pair, and numbered accordingly. A notable part of her Structure Végétale series of works, which includes chandeliers and mirrors, the present lot are arguably the most important examples of the model ever produced, being a direct commission by one of the world’s greatest art collectors of the 20th century directly from the artist whose work so inspired and moved him.
Christie's would like to thank Mrs Claude Lalanne and the Lalanne workshop for their assistance with the cataloguing of the present lot.