François-Xavier Lalanne French, 1927-2008

François-Xavier Lalanne was born in Gascony in 1927 and died in Seine-et-Marne in 2008. A sculptor and designer of remarkable invention, his career is inseparable from the creative partnership he shared with his wife, Claude Lalanne. Working together from the 1960s under the name Les Lalanne, they developed a body of work that was both whimsical and precise, with early commissions from Yves Saint Laurent helping to secure their standing in the art and design worlds.

While Claude turned to the vegetal world, François-Xavier found enduring inspiration in animals – real, imagined, and symbolic – transforming them into sculptural forms that were as functional as they were fantastical. His furniture, often monumental in scale and serene in presence, drew on his early experience in the Egyptian and Assyrian rooms of the Louvre, lending his creatures a hieratic stillness and a sense of timeless ritual. Though his objects served practical purposes, they refused to be reduced to utility; they carried with them a quiet grandeur and a life of their own. Through this merging of myth, nature, and design, François-Xavier reshaped the boundaries between art and the everyday, establishing a legacy that continues to influence how we live with – and think about – objects.

François-Xavier moved to Paris in his youth to study sculpture, drawing and painting at the Académie Julian, Paris. The Lalannes’ work is represented in many prominent collections around the world, including the National Design Museum, New York; Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York; Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne, Paris; Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.