Famous couples in art history

Art history is full of great love stories of artists who inspired each other, forming intense bonds and creating unforgettable art. Artalistic has selected five of these iconic duos in order to bring you a glimpse of their most iconic work and passionate partnerships. (Illustration: Marina Abramovic et Ulay).

5 famous couples in art history

This is part two of our series on famous artist couples.  Part one was published a few months ago, feel free to read that article about five famous couples in art history before we embark on part two.

Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely

Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) and Jean Tinguely (1925-1991) are both distinguished sculptors and one of the most famous couples in the history of art. They were married in July 1971, more than 15 years after they first met. Their first collaboration made waves in the art world, foreshadowing the extraordinary adventure they would embark on. Members of the New Realist group, their love matured as they reflected upon and shared their artistic processes.

Despite differences of opinion about their subject matter, they stayed together until Jean's death, when he declared: “We are two sculptors attached to one another, who live in two very different worlds. Materially opposed, ideologically opposed and opposed through gender, masculinity on one hand, and a deep femininity on the other… This makes us fight, we fight each other.” Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely made countless masterpieces, including the sumptuous Stravinsky Fountain next to the Centre Pompidou, Le Cyclop in Milly-la-Forêt, and possible their most well-known work of art, the Tarot Garden in Tuscany.

Christo & Jeanne-Claude

Christo (1935-2020) Vladimiroff Javacheff was born in Bulgaria in 1935. After the war, he studied fine arts, with a predilection for drawing. Fleeing the Communist regime, which imposed propagandist subjects on artists, he moved to Vienna, then to Paris in 1958. He met Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935-2009) in Paris. Coincidentally, she was born on the same day as Christo, June 13, 1935! The couple spent time with the New Realists in the 1960s. At this point in art history, street art and outdoor art were becoming increasingly popular.

Christo started what would later become his signature style, wrapping objects. He started small and slowly moved on to more mammoth installations, beginning with bottles and furniture. Christo and Jeanne-Claude moved to New York in 1964 and they quickly became inseparable. They formed a complementary duo, Christo designing, Jeanne-Claude managing the logistics and overseeing increasingly monumental projects - wrapping famous monuments and objects in nature. To name but a few of this famous artist-couple's major achievements: wrapping the Pont Neuf in Paris in 1985, the Reichstag in Berlin in 1995 and The Gates a 22-mile installation in Central Park in 2005.

Marina Abramovic & Ulay

The Serbian artist Marina Abramovic was born in Belgrade in 1946 and met Frank Uwe Laysiepen, AKA Ulay (1943-2020), in 1975. For the next 12 years, the two performers lived a life full of romance and iconic art. The couple explored movement, freedom, life and death through original, sometimes extreme performances.

This famous artist couple’s approach often challenged traditional ways of expressing oneself through art. For example, their major piece Rest Energy (1981) blurred the boundaries between art and life by ambitiously exploring the limits of the body, ego and union. In 1988, after joining forces for a happening on the Great Wall of China, they went their separate ways. In 2010, they were reunited in a deeply moving performance by Marina Abramovic at New York's MoMA, during which Mariana couldn't resist grabbing her former lover’s hands, digressing from the prescripted performance. This was a truly poignant moment that has gone down in the annals of art history.

Mitchell & Riopelle

Joan Mitchell (1926-1992) met the Canadian artist Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923-2002) in the summer of 1955 in a café on Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris. The American painter had already made a name for herself as an important member of the New York School. At the early age of 20, she worked in Hans Hofmann's studio and discovered the New York avant-garde scene, notably Jackson Pollock.

Her love affair with the French-Canadian painter, engraver and sculptor lasted 25 years. They worked collaboratively for a quarter-century, oscillating between American abstract expressionism and French lyrical abstraction. This famous artist-couple created gigantic paintings inspired by nature. The surface of these paintings seems to swallow the viewer and are reminiscent of Pollock's work.

This couple created countless pieces, including Mitchell's La Fontaine (1957), a response to Riopelle's Plowing Under the Snow (1957), which was based on a shared admiration for Van Gogh. They settled in Normandy, but the adventure came to an end in 1979, when Riopelle returned to his native Quebec with a new, younger artist-lover.

Les Lalanne: power couple and famous artists

The sculptor Claude (1925-2019) and engraver-sculptor François-Xavier (1927-2008) Lalanne have always shared the same interests and a similar poetic vision, which drew them to each other. This famous artist couple were inseparable. The two met in 1952 and they never left each other’s side until François-Xavier's death in 2008. They were good friends with Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, who gave them access to museums. The two artists worked together in the same studio in Ury, near Fontainebleau. 

Flora and Fauna were recurrent themes in their work throughout the second half of the 20^th century. Their work was often surreal, playful and whimsical. François-Xavier Lalanne's cement and bronze sheep are absolutely iconic. After Claude's death in 2019, Sotheby's Paris successfully auctioned the contents of their home and studio.