The French artist Claude Lalanne, part of the Lalanne sculptor couple whose surreal yet often functional works are highly prized by collectors, died on Wednesday aged 93, her agent told AFP. For decades Lalanne formed a distinctive duo with her fellow sculptor and husband Francois-Xavier Lalanne, creating works whose fans included fashion giant Yves Saint Laurent and the iconoclastic French singer Serge Gainsbourg.
She had been taken to a hospital in Fontainebleau, south of Paris after suffering a stroke. "Claude Lalanne had the simplicity of artists who work with their hands to build their own poetic world, without worrying about anything else," the gallery owner Jean-Gabriel Mitterrand, a nephew of former French president Francois Mitterrand, said.
The artist, who was still working in her studio in the village of Ury last week, studied architecture at Paris's renowned Beaux Arts school before turning to art.