Claude Jeanneau-Astrachan (1930-2022) was a sculptor, painter, and French professor born in Nice who studied design and painting at the Paris studio of Jean Lombard from 1953 to 1955. She earned scholarships to study in the U.S., first at the Silvermine School of Design and then at the Kansas City Art Institute under the tutelage of sculptor Julius Schmidt, earning a master of fine arts degree in 1957. Another scholarship took her to Mexico City College in 1959 for a year of further study.
Most of Jeanneau-Astrachan’s sculptures are cast aluminum, with some in bronze, with the molds carved from industrial blocks of sand. In the foundry, the poured metal would fill the negative space and create the positive. Every piece is one of a kind, since the mold is then broken away from the piece after cooling. She also painted and drew. Her work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions in the U.S. and France.
Jeanneau-Astrachan married the novelist Samuel Astrachan in 1960 and the two began dividing time between the South of France and the U.S. She taught French at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb and starting in 1971 at Wayne State University in Detroit for one semester of every year. She also created the Wayne at Gordes program, which was a six-week intensive French language summer program for six to eight Wayne State students at the family’s home in Southern France.
