Claude Lalanne

Commissioned directly from the artist in 1999 by the present owner

Pierre Passebon, Jacques Grange, Oeuvres récentes, Paris, 2021, p. 292, illustrated in colour

Claude Lalanne's unique Crocodile Stools exemplify her ability to animate furniture with sculptural wit, transforming utilitarian objects into fantastical artifacts that here blur the line between fossil, beast, and seat. Offered here for the first time at auction, these stools were modeled in gold patinated bronze from the skin of a real crocodile.

The origins of the Crocodile series are as surreal as the works themselves. In 1972, under a full moon, Lalanne paid a midnight visit to the local zoo. Thanks to a shared connection with the artist Niki de Saint Phalle, the zoo’s director had agreed to give her the body of a recently deceased crocodile. Lalanne had long imagined incorporating the creature into her work but knew it would be impossible without an actual specimen. Using galvanoplastie—a process that deposits metal via electric current—she preserved every scale, claw and curve of the crocodile with stunning fidelity, creating sculptures that feel both hyperreal and otherworldly. She produced a wide array of works using full or partial crocodile forms—chairs, stools, desks—each one balancing menace with charm.

The Crocodile Stool presents a deceptively simple form: a compact seat with three clawed feet. Yet closer inspection reveals extraordinary reptilian detail rendered in rich, tactile bronze. The hypnotic surface invites both admiration and interaction, creating pieces that feel animate, caught between stillness and readiness.

For Lalanne, domestic space was a site of transformation where nature, fantasy, and everyday life converge. The Crocodile Stool refuse to choose between art and function, encouraging viewers to pause, sit, and discover. Though each bears unique traces of the artist's hand and organic asymmetry, the form has become emblematic of her practice—furniture that behaves like sculpture, relics that feel entirely contemporary.