Lalanne : Bestiaires

At the turn of the century, François-Xavier Lalanne (1927-2008) began a collaboration with the Presses de Serendip by illustrating a personal selection of La Fontaine's fables, a project that had been close to his heart for a long time but which he had not been able to complete until then.

Having taken up the art of engraving, he then imagined a Bestiaire ordinaire (ordinary bestiary), devoted to the animals and insects that surround us, whose images he accompanied with a series of short texts of remarkable wit and humour.

From what was to be a single volume, a triptych finally emerged: the Bestiaire ordinaire was followed by a Bestiaire nécessaire (necessary bestiary), exalting domestic fauna, and then by a Bestiaire légendaire (legendary bestiary), populated by fabulous creatures, from the centaur to Mickey. Each plate in this triptych had to be executed in a different technique, reflecting the diversity of reality: from woodcut to photo, lithography, drypoint and heliogravure.

Limited to seventy-five copies, printed by hand on Arches vellum, these volumes have hardly left the secret of collectors' cabinets and have only been seen by a handful of amateurs. They are now breaking records at public auction.

The present volume brings together for the first time all the plates of the three Bestiaires (including those, limited to ten copies, of the first editions). By placing engravings and sculptures side by side, it illustrates the graphic dimension of a universe whose plastic value was essentially known. It thus reveals a totally unknown aspect of the creation of Claude (1925-2019) and Francois-Xavier Lalanne.