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Credited with the invention of the mobile, Alexander Calder revolutionized twentieth-century art with his innovative use of subtle air currents to animate sculpture. An accomplished painter of gouaches and sculptor in a variety of media, Calder is best known for poetic arrangements of boldly colored, irregularly shaped geometric forms that convey a sense of harmony and balance.


'''Alexander Calder''' (22 July 1898 – 11 November 1976), also known as '''Sandy Calder''', was an [[United States|American]] [[Sculpture|sculptor]] and [[artist]] most famous for inventing the [[mobile (sculpture)|mobile]]. In addition to mobile and stabile sculpture, Alexander Calder also created [[painting]]s, [[lithography|lithographs]], [[toy]]s, [[tapestry]] and [[jewelry]].
Calder was born in a suburb of Philadelphia to a family of artists. His grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder, and father, Alexander Stirling Calder, created sculptures and public monuments, and his mother was a painter. Accustomed to traveling in pursuit of public art commissions, the family moved to Pasadena, California, in 1906. The new environment—with its expansive night sky studded with brilliant planets and stars—fascinated the young Calder. These cosmic forms strongly influenced the structure and iconography of his future work.


==Childhood==
At a young age, Calder began using tools and found materials to create various structures and inventions. This constructive impulse led him to attend the Stevens Institute of Technology, where he received a degree in mechanical engineering in 1919. Yet by 1922 he had abandoned his new career. After a stint as a seaman, Calder began formal art study at the Art Students League in New York in 1923. During this period, Calder worked as a freelance illustrator and often visited zoos and circuses to sketch.


Born in [[Lawnton, Pennsylvania]], on July 22, 1898, Calder came from a family of artists. His father, [[Alexander Stirling Calder]], was a well-known sculptor who created many public installations, a majority of them in [[Philadelphia]]. Calder’s grandfather, sculptor [[Alexander Milne Calder]], was born in [[Scotland]] and immigrated to Philadelphia in 1868. He is best-known for the colossal statue of William Penn on top of Philadelphia's City Hall tower. Calder’s mother, Nanette Lederer Calder, was a professional portrait painter who studied at the [[Académie Julian]] and the [[Sorbonne]] in Paris from around 1888 until 1893. She then moved to Philadelphia where she met Alexander Stirling Calder while studying at the [[Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts]].<ref>[http://www.herbertpalmergallery.com/main_pages/artists/calder_nanette_bio.html Herbert Palmer Gallery - Nanette Calder<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> Calder’s parents were married on 22 February 1895. His older sister, Margaret "Peggy" Calder, was born in 1896. Her married name was Margaret Calder Hayes, and she was instrumental in the development of the [[UC Berkeley Art Museum]].<ref>Hayes, Margaret Calder, Three Alexander Calders: A Family Memoir. Middlebury, VT: Paul S Eriksson, 1977.</ref>
Calder moved to Paris in 1926, and during his seven-year stay he delighted fellow artists including Man Ray, Joan Miró, Fernand Léger, Le Corbusier and Piet Mondrian and attracted the attention of art patrons with his whimsical wire figures and portrait heads. Most notably, he created small sculptures of circus animals and performers with movable parts and developed and toured a performance/demonstration dubbed the “Cirque Calder.” This series culminated in the completion of his most celebrated piece, Circus (1932, Whitney Museum of American Art).


In 1902, at the age of four, Calder posed nude for his father’s sculpture ''The Man Cub'', which is now located in the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] in [[New York City]]. In that same year, he completed his earliest sculpture, a clay elephant.<ref>Calder, Alexander and Davidson, Jean, Calder, An Autobiography with Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966, p. 13.</ref>
Calder’s use of irregular, biomorphic forms that recall the work of Miró reflected the influence of Surrealism and Dada, but it was the art and concepts of Mondrian that would have the most decisive impact on Calder’s work. Calder visited Mondrian’s studio in 1930 and later described how the experience transformed his understanding of abstract art. He wrote, “This one visit gave me a shock that started things. Though I had often heard the word ‘modern’ before, I did not consciously know or feel the term ‘abstract.’ So now at thirty-two, I wanted to paint and work in the abstract.” (1) Shortly thereafter, Calder was invited to join the international Abstraction-Création group that included Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Jean Arp, and many other artists working with geometric abstract forms.


Three years later, when Calder was seven and his sister was nine, Stirling Calder contracted [[tuberculosis]] and Calder’s parents moved to a ranch in [[Oracle, Arizona]], leaving the children in the care of family friends for a year.<ref>Calder, Alexander and Davidson, Jean, Calder, An Autobiography with Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966, p. 15.</ref> The children were reunited with their parents in late March, 1906 and stayed at the ranch in Arizona until fall of the same year.<ref>[http://www.calder.org/ Calder Foundation<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
Calder was impressed by Mondrian’s reduction of visual imagery to a vocabulary of flat planes of primary colors. He suggested that Mondrian consider adding movement to the forms. Mondrian rejected the idea, stating “my painting is already very fast.” (2) Calder soon took his own advice and began experimenting with movement in his work. At first, he drew on his mechanical training to devise cranks and motors that would produce kinetic effects. The following year, Calder exhibited these new pieces, christened “mobiles” by Marcel Duchamp, as well as non-moving wire abstractions termed “stabiles” by Jean Arp. By 1932 Calder realized that ambient air currents were strong enough to move lightweight sculptures, and he abandoned prescribed patterns of movement for more spontaneous rhythms.


After Arizona, the Calder family moved to [[Pasadena, California|Pasadena]], [[California]]. The windowed cellar of the family home became Calder's first studio and he received his first set of tools. He used scraps of copper wire that he found in the streets to make jewelry and beads for his sister’s dolls. On January 1, 1907, Calder’s mother took him to the [[Tournament of Roses Parade]] in Pasadena, where he observed a four-horse-chariot race. This style of event later became the finale of Calder’s wire circus shows.<ref>Calder, Alexander and Davidson, Jean, Calder, An Autobiography with Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966, pp. 21-22.</ref>
In 1933, Calder reestablished his home base in the United States, on a farm in Roxbury, Connecticut. The years from this point to the late 1950s were the most varied and prolific of Calder’s career. As he emerged as an artist of international stature, with a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943, Calder continued to make mobiles (hanging and standing) and stabiles made out of sheet metal, as well as paintings, jewelry, and set designs for performances by Martha Graham, Eric Satie, and others. When scrap metal was in short supply during World War II, Calder turned to wood. In 1953, the Calder family purchased a home in Saché, France, and they began dividing their time between Connecticut, France and periods of extended travel. By the end of the 1950s, the proportions of Calder’s mobiles had dramatically increased and he was completing more site-specific commissions.


In 1909, when Calder was in the fourth grade, he sculpted a dog and a duck out of sheet brass as Christmas gifts for his parents. The sculptures were three dimensional and the duck was kinetic because it rocked when gently tapped. These sculptures are frequently cited as early examples of Calder’s skill.<ref>Hayes, Margaret Calder, Three Alexander Calders: A Family Memoir. Middlebury, VT: Paul S Eriksson, 1977, p. 41.</ref>
Large-scale sheet-metal stabiles commissioned for public spaces dominate Calder’s late career in the 1960s and 1970s. Their vivid colors, sweeping arches and shapes evoking birds and animals offer a counterpoint to rectilinear modern architecture and breathe life into urban environments around the world. One notable example is Flamingo (1973, Federal Center Plaza, Chicago). Widely celebrated during his lifetime, Calder died just a few weeks after the opening of “Calder’s Universe,” a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.


In 1910, Stirling Calder’s rehabilitation was complete and the Calder family moved back to Philadelphia, where Alexander briefly attended the [[Germantown Academy]], and then to [[Croton-on-Hudson]] in New York State.<ref>Calder, Alexander and Davidson, Jean, Calder, An Autobiography with Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966, pp. 28-29.</ref> In Croton, during his early high school years, Calder was befriended by the painter [[Everett Shinn]] with whom he built a gravity powered system of mechanical trains. As Calder described:
1. Alexander Calder, An Autobiography in Pictures (New York: Pantheon Books, 1966), p. 113.
2. Ibid.


: ''We ran the train on wooden rails held by spikes; a chunk of iron racing down the incline speeded the cars. We even lit up some cars with candle lights.''<ref>Calder, Alexander and Davidson, Jean, Calder, An Autobiography with Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966, p. 31.</ref>
Alexander Calder was born in Philadelphia, the son of a well-known sculptor and educator and his wife, a talented painter. Calder's grandfather, also a sculptor, executed the figure of William Penn that graces the dome of the city hall in Philadelphia. Though he was brought up in an artistic atmosphere, Calder's own inclinations were mechanical. He trained as a mechanical engineer at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, studying such things as descriptive geometry, mechanical drawing, and applied kinetics - the branch of science that deals with the effects of force on free-moving bodies - in preparation for receiving his degree in 1919.


After Croton, the Calders moved to [[Spuyten Duyvil, Bronx|Spuyten Duyvil]] to be closer to the [[Tenth Street Studio Building]] in [[Bronx]], New York, where Stirling Calder rented a studio. While living in Spuyten Duyvil, Calder attended [[Yonkers Public Schools|Yonkers High]].
After working at a number of jobs that allowed him time for travel and reflection over the next few years, Calder decided to explore his growing interest in art. In 1923, two years after beginning his study of drawing in night school, he enrolled fulltime at the Art Students League in New York City. There he attended classes given by George Luks, Guy Pène Du Bois, and John Sloan, all important American painters of that period. Calder also did freelance work as an illustrator for the National Police Gazette for about two years. In 1926 he had his first one-man exhibition of paintings at the Artist's Gallery in New York City. While concentrating on painting, Calder also worked on wood sculpture, and when he visited Paris in 1926 he continued to carve.


In 1912, Stirling Calder was appointed acting chief of the Department of Sculpture of the [[Panama Pacific International Exposition]] in [[San Francisco]].<ref>[http://calder.org/chronology/period/1898-1930/10 Calder Foundation<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> He began work on sculptures for the exposition that was held in 1915. During Alexander Calder’s high school years between 1912 and 1915, the Calder family moved back and forth between New York and California. In each new location Calder’s parents reserved cellar space as a studio for their son. Toward the end of this period, Calder stayed with friends in California while his parents moved back to New York so that he could graduate from [[Lowell High School (San Francisco)|Lowell High School in San Francisco]]. Calder graduated in the class of 1915.
Circus Brought Lasting Fame


==Early years==
Calder's first significant recognition as an artist came when he exhibited his now-famous miniature circus with its animated wire performers at Paris's Salon des Humoristes in 1927. The idea for the toy figures can be traced back to sketches he made in 1925 while reporting on the circus for the Police Gazette. Made from wire, rubber, cork, buttons, bottle caps, wood, and other small "found" objects, Calder's circus includes lions, acrobats, trapeze artists, elephants, a ringmaster, and numerous other figures. Unlike many art works of the period, the unusual creation drew crowds from outside the artistic community as well as within, and the thirty-year-old artist found himself suddenly widely known.
[[Image:Calder-redmobile.jpg|thumb|right|350px|''Red Mobile'', 1956. Painted sheet metal and metal rods, [[Montreal Museum of Fine Arts]].]]
Although Calder’s parents encouraged his creativity as a child, they discouraged their children from becoming artists, knowing that it was an uncertain and financially difficult career. In 1915, Calder decided to study mechanical engineering after learning about the discipline from a classmate at Lowell High School named Hyde Lewis. Stirling Calder arranged for his son's enrollment at the [[Stevens Institute of Technology]] in [[Hoboken, New Jersey|Hoboken]], [[New Jersey]].


Calder joined the football team during his freshman year at Stevens and practiced with the team all four years, but he never played in a game. He also played [[lacrosse]], at which he was more successful. He was a member of the [[Delta Tau Delta]] fraternity. He excelled in the subject of mathematics.
Calder's first wire sculpture, Josephine Baker (1926), a witty linear representation of the famous American-born chanteuse, was exhibited to the Paris art community during the same period that his circus was drawing attention. He decided to return to New York City late in 1927, where he gave a one-man show that included Josephine Baker, as well as several of his other wire portraits. Those portraits would grow increasingly three dimensional as the artist refined his technique.


In the summer of 1916, Calder spent five weeks training at the Plattsburg Civilian Military Training Camp. In 1917, he joined the Student’s Army Training Corps, Naval Section, at Stevens and was made guide of the battalion.
Influenced by Modernists


:''I learned to talk out of the side of my mouth and have never been quite able to correct it since.''<ref>Calder, Alexander and Davidson, Jean, Calder, An Autobiography with Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966, p. 47.</ref>
In November 1928 Calder was again in Paris, supporting himself with performances of his miniature circus, one of which was attended by Spanish surrealist Joan Miró. Calder had his first one-man shows in Paris at the Galérie Billiet and in Berlin in 1929. In Paris he met a number of important modernists, including Fernand Léger, Theo Van Doesburg, and Piet Mondrian, the latter whose work particularly impressed him. By 1930 Calder was making large-scale abstract wire sculptures using flat metal ovals painted black or bright colors, as well as small balls or other shapes suspended by long wires. Many of these work suggested the solar system in their design. From these beginnings he developed motor-driven sculptures, which featured objects hanging from large bases, although the artist had no fondness for the regular, predictable motion provided by motors. An exhibition of Calder's kinetic sculptures was seen by Marcel Duchamp, who referred to them as "mobiles" - a term which became associated with this work. He made a number of sculptures during the thirties which employed the same forms as the mobiles but were static, and known as "stabiles."


Calder received a degree from Stevens in 1919. For the next several years, he worked a variety of engineering jobs, including working as a hydraulics engineer and a draughtsman for the New York Edison Company, but he was not content in any of the roles.
Meanwhile, in 1931 Calder was married to Louisa James, who he had met on a voyage to New York City; that same year he illustrated an edition of Aesop's Fables. Two years later Calder made his first draft-propelled mobiles. Rather than following a monotonous path of motion as did his motor-driven sculptures, these pieces create myriad patterns once they are set in action by a breeze or gentle push. Their shapes, largely ovoid and biomorphic, may have been inspired by the art of Miró. In 1933 Calder and his wife bought a farm in Roxbury, Connecticut, where he established his studio. In 1935 and again in 1936 he designed stage sets for the dancer Martha Graham.


In June 1922, Calder started work as a fireman in the boiler room of the passenger ship ''H. F. Alexander''. While the ship sailed from [[San Francisco]] to [[New York City]], Calder worked on deck off the [[Guatemala|Guatemalan Coast]] and witnessed both the sun rising and the moon setting on opposite horizons. As he described in his autobiography:
Commissioned Works Prompted Travel


: ''It was early one morning on a calm sea, off [[Guatemala]], when over my couch — a coil of rope — I saw the beginning of a fiery red sunrise on one side and the moon looking like a silver coin on the other''.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York City gave a comprehensive exhibition of Calder's work in 1943, during which the artist gave performances of his famous circus; the show's catalog was the first extensive study on the artist. The following year he made sculptures out of plaster to be cast in bronze. These pieces moved at a slow, measured pace. During this period he illustrated Three Young Rats (1944), The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with Robert Penn Warren's essay on Coleridge (1945), and The Fables of LaFontaine (1946). At this time Calder's international reputation was reinforced by exhibitions in New York, Amsterdam, Berne, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Boston, and Richmond, Virginia. In 1952 he designed the acoustical ceiling for the Aula Magna at the university in Caracas and received the first prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale. Commissions for his designs continued to pour in as he created everything from jewelry to costume and stage-set designs for dance and theatrical performances. In the 1970s, at the height of Calder's fame, Braniff Airlines commissioned him to paint some of their jet planes with his unique, boldly colorful designs.


The ''H.F. Alexander'' docked in San Francisco and Calder traveled up to Aberdeen, Washington where his sister lived with her husband, Kenneth Hayes. Calder took a job as a timekeeper at a logging camp. The mountain scenery inspired him to write home to request paints and brushes. Shortly after this, Calder decided to move back to New York to pursue a career as an artist.
Calder's works are featured in permanent installations around the world. In 1955 he travelled to India to execute 11 mobiles for public buildings in Ahmadabad. He designed many monumental pieces, including those for Lincoln Center in New York City, for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, for the gardens of UNESCO in Paris, and for Expo '67 at Montreal. In 1964, when the artist was in his late seventies, he was honored with a comprehensive retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City; a smaller one was given at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970. At his death in 1976, Calder was eulogized by Minneapolis, Minnesota, curator Marvin Friedman as "one of the greatest form-givers America has ever produced."


== Art career ==
Alexander Calder was born in 1898, the second child of artist parents—his father was a sculptor and his mother a painter. Because his father, Alexander Stirling Calder, received public commissions, the family traversed the country throughout Calder's childhood. Calder was encouraged to create, and from the age of eight he always had his own workshop wherever the family lived. For Christmas in 1909, Calder presented his parents with two of his first sculptures, a tiny dog and duck cut from a brass sheet and bent into formation. The duck is kinetic—it rocks back and forth when tapped. Even at age eleven, his facility in handling materials was apparent.
[[Image:Flamingo Calder.jpg|thumb|280px|''[[Flamingo (sculpture)|Flamingo]]'' 1974, in the Federal Plaza, [[Chicago]], [[Illinois]].]]
Having decided to become an artist, Calder moved to New York and enrolled at the [[Art Students League of New York|Art Students' League]]. While a student, he worked for the ''[[National Police Gazette]]'' where, in 1925, one of his assignments was sketching the [[Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus]]. Calder became fascinated with the circus, a theme that would reappear in his later work.


In 1926, Calder moved to [[Paris]] where he established a studio at 22 rue Daguerre in the [[Montparnasse|Montparnasse Quarter]]. At the suggestion of a [[Serbia]]n toy merchant, he began to create toys with articulation. He never found the toy merchant again, but, at the urging of fellow sculptor [[Jose de Creeft]], he submitted his toys to the Salon des Humoristes. Later that fall, Calder began to create his ''[[Cirque Calder]]'', a miniature circus fashioned from wire, string, rubber, cloth, and other found objects. Designed to fit into suitcases (it eventually grew to fill five), the circus was portable, and allowed Calder to hold performances on both sides of the Atlantic. He gave elaborately improvised shows, recreating the performance of a real circus. Soon, his "[[Cirque Calder]]"[http://ubu.artmob.ca/video/Calder-Alexander_Le-cirque.avi][http://www.sfmoma.org/espace/calder/calder_cirque.html] (usually on view at the [[Whitney Museum of American Art]]) became popular with the Parisian avant-garde. Some months Calder would charge an entrance fee to pay his rent.[http://www.nga.gov/education/classroom/counting_on_art/popups/pop_calder_1.htm][http://www.ubu.com/film/calder.html]
Despite his talents, Calder did not originally set out to become an artist. He instead enrolled at the Stevens Institute of Technology after high school and graduated in 1919 with an engineering degree. Calder worked for several years after graduation at various jobs, including as a hydraulics engineer and automotive engineer, timekeeper in a logging camp, and fireman in a ship's boiler room. While serving in the latter occupation, on a ship from New York bound for San Francisco, Calder awoke on the deck to see both a brilliant sunrise and a scintillating full moon; each was visible on opposite horizons (the ship then lay off the Guatemalan coast). The experience made a lasting impression on Calder: he would refer to it throughout his life.
In 1927, Calder returned to the United States. He designed several kinetic wooden push and pull toys for children, which he had mass-produced by the Gould Manufacturing Company, in Oshkosh, WI. His originals, as well as playable replicas, are on display in the [[Berkshire Museum]] in [[Pittsfield, Massachusetts]].


In 1928, Calder held his first solo show at a commercial gallery at the Weyhe Gallery in [[New York City]]. In 1934, he had his first solo museum exhibition in the United States at [[The Renaissance Society]] at the [[University of Chicago]].
Calder committed to becoming an artist shortly thereafter, and in 1923 he moved to New York and enrolled at the Art Students League. He also took a job illustrating for the National Police Gazette, which sent him to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus to sketch circus scenes for two weeks in 1925. The circus became a lifelong interest of Calder's, and after moving to Paris in 1926, he created his Cirque Calder, a complex and unique body of art. The assemblage included diminutive performers, animals, and props he had observed at the Ringling Brothers Circus. Fashioned from wire, leather, cloth, and other found materials, Cirque Calder was designed to be manipulated manually by Calder. Every piece was small enough to be packed into a large trunk, enabling the artist to carry it with him and hold performances anywhere. Its first performance was held in Paris for an audience of friends and peers, and soon Calder was presenting the circus in both Paris and New York to much success. Calder's renderings of his circus often lasted about two hours and were quite elaborate. Indeed, the Cirque Calder predated performance art by forty years.


In 1929, Calder had his first solo show of wire sculpture in Paris at Galerie Billiet. The painter [[Jules Pascin]], a friend of Calder's from the cafes of [[Montparnasse]], wrote the preface.
Calder found he enjoyed working with wire for his circus: he soon began to sculpt from this material portraits of his friends and public figures of the day. Word traveled about the inventive artist, and in 1928 Calder was given his first solo gallery show at the Weyhe Gallery in New York. The show at Weyhe was soon followed by others in New York, as well as in Paris and Berlin: as a result, Calder spent much time crossing the ocean by boat. He met Louisa James (a grandniece of writer Henry James) on one of these steamer journeys and the two were married in January 1931. He also became friendly with many prominent artists and intellectuals of the early twentieth century at this time, including Joan Miró, Fernand Léger, James Johnson Sweeney, and Marcel Duchamp. In October 1930, Calder visited the studio of Piet Mondrian in Paris and was deeply impressed by a wall of colored paper rectangles that Mondrian continually repositioned for compositional experiments. He recalled later in life that this experience "shocked" him toward total abstraction. For three weeks following this visit, he created solely abstract paintings, only to discover that he did indeed prefer sculpture to painting. Soon after, he was invited to join Abstraction-Création, an influential group of artists (including Arp, Mondrian, and Hélion) with whom he had become friendly.


In June 1929, while traveling from Paris to New York, Calder met his future wife, Louisa James, grandniece of author [[Henry James]] and philosopher [[William James]]. They married in 1931.
In the fall of 1931, a significant turning point in Calder's artistic career occurred when he created his first truly kinetic sculpture and gave form to an entirely new type of art. The first of these objects moved by systems of cranks and motors, and were dubbed "mobiles" by Marcel Duchamp—in French mobile refers to both "motion" and "motive." Calder soon abandoned the mechanical aspects of these works when he realized he could fashion mobiles that would undulate on their own with the air's currents. Jean Arp, in order to differentiate Calder's non-kinetic works from his kinetic works, named Calder's stationary objects "stabiles."
[[Image:calder-montreal.jpg|thumb|left|280px|''[[Man]]'', a "stabile" by Alexander Calder; Terre des Hommes (Expo 67 fairground), [[Saint Helen's Island]], [[Montreal]].]]
While in Paris, Calder met and became friends with a number of avant-garde artists, including [[Joan Miró]], [[Jean Arp]], and [[Marcel Duchamp]]. A visit to [[Piet Mondrian]]'s studio in 1930 "shocked" him into embracing [[abstract art]].


The [[Cirque Calder]] can be seen as the start of Calder's interest in both [[wire sculpture]] and [[kinetic art]]. He maintained a sharp eye with respect to the engineering balance of the sculptures and utilized these to develop the kinetic sculptures Duchamp would ultimately dub as "[[mobile (sculpture)|mobiles]]," a French pun meaning both "mobile" and "motive." He designed some of the characters in the circus to perform suspended from a thread. However, it was the mixture of his experiments to develop purely abstract sculpture following his visit with [[Piet Mondrian|Mondrian]] that lead to his first truly kinetic sculptures, manipulated by means of cranks and pulleys.
In 1933, Calder and Louisa left France and returned to the United States, where they purchased an old farmhouse in Roxbury, Connecticut. Calder converted an icehouse attached to the main house into a studio for himself. Their first daughter, Sandra, was born in 1935, and a second daughter, Mary, followed in 1939. He also began his association with the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York with his first show in 1934. James Johnson Sweeney, who had become a close friend, wrote the catalogue's preface. Calder also constructed sets for ballets by both Martha Graham and Eric Satie during the 1930s, and continued to give Cirque Calder performances.


By the end of 1931, he had quickly moved on to more delicate sculptures which derived their motion from the air currents in the room. From this, Calder's true "mobiles" were born. At the same time, Calder was also experimenting with self-supporting, static, abstract sculptures, dubbed "stabiles" by [[Hans Arp|Arp]] to differentiate them from mobiles.
Calder's earliest attempts at large, outdoor sculptures were also constructed in this decade. These predecessors of his later imposing public works were much smaller and more delicate; the first attempts made for his garden were easily bent in strong winds. Yet, they are indicative of his early intentions to work on a grand scale. In 1937, Calder created his first large bolted stabile fashioned entirely from sheet metal, which he entitled Devil Fish. Enlarged from an earlier and smaller stabile, the work was exhibited in a Pierre Matisse Gallery show, Stabiles and Mobiles. This show also included Big Bird, another large work based on a smaller maquette. Soon after, Calder received commissions to make both Mercury Fountain for the Spanish Pavilion at the Parisian World Fair (a work that symbolized Spanish Republican resistance to fascism) and Lobster Trap and Fish Tail, a sizable mobile installed in the main stairwell of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.


Calder and Louisa returned to America in 1933 to settle in a farmhouse they purchased in [[Roxbury, Connecticut]], where they raised a family (first daughter, Sandra born 1935, second daughter, Mary, in 1939). Calder continued to give "[[Cirque Calder]]" performances but also worked with [[Martha Graham]], designing stage sets for her ballets and created a moving stage construction to accompany [[Eric Satie]]'s ''[[Socrate]]'' in 1936.
When the United States entered World War II, Calder applied for entry to the Marine Corps but was ultimately rejected. He continued to create: because metal was in short supply during the war years, Calder turned increasingly to wood as a sculptural medium. Working in wood resulted in yet another original form of sculpture, works called "constellations" by Sweeney and Duchamp. With their carved wood elements anchored by wire, the constellations were so called because they suggested the cosmos, though Calder did not intend that they represent anything in particular. The Pierre Matisse Gallery held an exhibition of these works in the spring of 1943, Calder's last solo show at that gallery. His association with Matisse ended shortly thereafter and he took up the Buchholz Gallery/Curt Valentin as his New York representation.


His first public commission was a pair of mobiles designed for the theater opened in 1937 in the [[Berkshire Museum]] in [[Pittsfield, Massachusetts]].
The forties and fifties were a remarkably productive period for Calder, which was launched in 1939 with the first retrospective of his work at the George Walter Vincent Smith Gallery in Springfield, Massachusetts. A second, major retrospective was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York just a few years later, in 1943. In 1945, Calder made a series of small-scale works; in keeping with his economy, many were made from scraps of metal trimmed while making larger pieces. While visiting Calder's studio about this time, Duchamp was intrigued by these small works. Inspired by the idea that the works could be easily dismantled, mailed to Europe, and re-assembled for an exhibition, he planned a Calder show at Galerie Louis Carré in Paris. This important show was held the following year and Jean-Paul Sartre wrote his famous essay on Calder's mobiles for the exhibition catalogue. In 1949, Calder constructed his largest mobile to date, International Mobile, for the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Third International Exhibition of Sculpture. He designed sets for "Happy as Larry," a play directed by Burgess Meredith, and for Nucléa, a dance performance directed by Jean Vilar. Galerie Maeght in Paris also held a Calder show in 1950, and subsequently became Calder's exclusive Parisian dealer. His association with Galerie Maeght lasted twenty-six years, until his death in 1976. After his New York dealer Curt Valentin died unexpectedly in 1954, Calder selected the Perls Gallery in New York as his new American dealer, and this alliance also lasted until the end of his life.


During [[World War II]], Calder attempted to join the [[United States Marine Corps|Marines]] as a camofleur, but was rejected. Instead, he continued to sculpt, but a scarcity of metal led to him producing work in [[wood carving|carved wood]].
Calder concentrated his efforts primarily on large-scale commissioned works in his later years. Some of these major monumental sculpture commissions include: .125, a mobile for the New York Port Authority that was hung in Idlewild (now John F. Kennedy) Airport (1957); La Spirale, for UNESCO, in Paris (1958); Teodelapio, for the city of Spoleto, Italy (1962); Man, for the Expo in Montreal (1967); El Sol Rojo (the largest of all Calder's works, at sixty-seven feet high) installed outside the Aztec Stadium for the Olympic Games in Mexico City; La grande vitesse, the first public art work to be funded by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan (1969); and Flamingo, a stabile for the General Services Administration in Chicago (1973).


Calder's first retrospective was held in 1938 at George Walter Vincent Smith Gallery in [[Springfield, Massachusetts]]. In 1943, the [[Museum of Modern Art]] hosted a well-received Calder retrospective, curated by [[James Johnson Sweeney]] and [[Marcel Duchamp]].
As the range and breadth of his various projects and commissions indicate, Calder's artistic talents were renowned worldwide by the 1960s. A retrospective of his work opened at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1964. Five years later, the Fondation Maeght, in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, held its own Calder retrospective. In 1966, Calder, together with his son-in-law Jean Davidson, published a well-received autobiography. Additionally, both of Calder's dealers, Galerie Maeght in Paris and the Perls Gallery in New York, averaged about one Calder show each per year.


Calder was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the [[3rd Sculpture International]] held at the [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]] in the summer of 1949. His mobile, ''International Mobile'' was the centerpiece of the exhibition and still hangs in 2007 where it was originally placed in 1949.
In 1976, he attended the opening of yet another retrospective of his work, Calder's Universe, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Just a few weeks later, Calder died at the age of seventy-eight, ending the most prolific and innovative artistic career of the twentieth century.


In the 1950s, Calder increasingly concentrated his efforts on producing monumental sculptures. Notable examples are ".125" for [[JFK Airport]] in 1957, "La Spirale" for [[UNESCO]] in Paris 1958 and "L'Homme" ("Man") for Expo '67 in Montreal. Calder's largest sculpture, at 20.5 m high, was "El Sol Rojo", constructed for the [[Olympic games]] in [[Mexico City]].
His works in this mode, from miniature to monumental, are called mobiles (suspended moving sculptures), standing mobiles (anchored moving sculptures) and stabiles (stationary constructions). Calder's abstract works are characteristically direct, spare, buoyant, colorful and finely crafted. He made ingenious, frequently witty, use of natural and manmade materials, including wire, sheetmetal, wood and bronze.


In 1962, he settled into his new workshop Carroi, a very futuristic design and overlooking the valley of the Lower Chevrière to Saché in Indre-et-Loire (France). He did not hesitate to offer his gouaches and small mobile to his friends in the country, he even donated to the town of a stabile trônant since 1974 in front of the church: an anti-sculpture free from gravity.
Calder was born in 1898 in Philadelphia, the son of Alexander Stirling Calder and grandson of Alexander Milne Calder, both well-known sculptors. After obtaining his mechanical engineering degree from the Stevens Institute of Technology, Calder worked at various jobs before enrolling at the Art Students League in New York City in 1923. During his student years, he did line drawings for the National Police Gazette.
In 1925, Calder published his first book, Animal Sketches, illustrated in brush and ink. He produced oil paintings of city scenes, in a loose and easy style. Early in 1926, he began to carve primitivist figures in tropical woods, which remained an important medium in his work until 1930.


He did make the most of its stabiles and mobiles at factory Biémont Tours (France), including "the Man", all stainless steel 24 meters tall, commissioned by Canada's International Nickel (Inco) for the Exposition Universelle de Montréal in 1967. All products are made from a model made by Calder, by the research department (headed by M. Porcheron, with Alain Roy, François Lopez, Michel Juigner ...) to design to 'scale, then by workers qualified boilermakers for manufacturing, Calder overseeing all operations, and if necessary amending the work. All stabiles will be manufactured in carbon steel, then painted for a major part in black, except the man who will be raw stainless steel , the mobiles are made of aluminum and made of duralumin.
In June 1936, Calder moved to Paris. He took some classes at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and made his first wire sculptures. Calder created a miniature circus in his studio; the animals, clowns and tumblers were made of wire and animated by hand. Many leading artists of the period attended, and helped with, the performances.
[[File:Cc belem 2.jpg|thumb|280px|''Untitled'' 1968, painted steel, Centro Cultural de Belém, [[Lisbon, Portugal]].]]
In 1966, Calder published his ''Autobiography with Pictures'' with the help of his son-in-law, Jean Davidson.


In June 1969, Calder attended the dedication of his monumental stabile ''“[[La Grande Vitesse]]”'' located in the city of [[Grand Rapids, Michigan]]. This sculpture is notable for being the first public work of art in the United States to be funded with federal monies; acquired with funds granted from the then new [[National Endowment for the Arts]] under its “Art for Public Places” program.
Calder's first New York City exhibition was in 1928, and other exhibitions in Paris and Berlin gained him international recognition as a significant artist. A visit to Piet Mondrian's studio proved pivotal. Calder began to work in an abstract style, finishing his first nonobjective construction in 1931.


Calder created a sculpture called ''WTC Stabile'' (also known as ''Bent Propeller''), which in 1971 was installed at the entrance of the [[World Trade Center]]'s North Tower. When [[Battery Park City]] opened, the sculpture was moved to Vesey and Church Streets.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.ifar.org/911_public2.htm |title=Public Art at the World Trade Center |author=Wenegrat, Saul |publisher=International Foundation for Art Research |date=2002-02-28 |accessdate=2007-07-27}}</ref> It stood in front of [[7 World Trade Center]] when it was destroyed on [[September 11, 2001]].<ref>[http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0211/911-treasures.html Lives and Treasures Taken, The Library of Congress] Retrieved 27 July, 2007.</ref>
In early 1932, he exhibited his first moving sculpture in an exhibition organized by Marcel Duchamp, who coined the word "mobile." In May 1932, Calder's fame was consolidated by the first United States show of his mobiles. Some were motor-driven, His later wind-driven mobiles enabled the sculptural parts to move independently, as Calder said, "by nature and chance." Calder returned to the United States to live and work in Roxbury, Massachusetts in June 1932.


Calder died on 11 November 1976, shortly following the opening of another major retrospective show at the [[Whitney Museum of American Art|Whitney Museum]] in New York. Calder had been working on a third plane, entitled ''Tribute to Mexico'', when he died.
From the 1940s on, Calder's works, many of them large-scale outdoor sculptures, have been placed in virtually every major city of the Western world. In the 1950s, he created two new series of mobiles: "Towers," which included wall-mounted wire constructions, and "Gongs," mobiles with sound.


==Calder's paintings==
Calder was prolific and worked throughout his career in many art forms. He produced drawings, oil paintings, watercolors, etchings, gouache and serigraphy. He also designed jewelry, tapestry, theatre settings and architectural interiors. Calder died in 1976.
[[Image:Untitled gouache on paper by Alexander Calder, 1967, --Honolulu Academy of Arts--.jpg|thumb|right|240px|Untitled gouache on paper by Alexander Calder, 1967, [[Honolulu Academy of Arts]]]]

In addition to sculptures, Calder continued to paint. In 1973, he was commissioned by [[Braniff International Airways]] to paint a full-size [[Douglas DC-8|DC-8-62]] as a "flying canvas," In 1975, Calder completed a second plane, this time a [[Boeing 727|Boeing 727-227]], as a tribute to the [[U.S. Bicentennial]]. In 1975, he was commissioned by [[BMW]] to paint the a [[BMW 3.0 CSL]] which would come to be the first vehicle in the [[BMW Art Car]] Project.

==Legacy==


Two months after his death, Calder was posthumously awarded the [[Presidential Medal of Freedom]], the United States' highest civilian honor, by President [[Gerald Ford]]. However, representatives of the Calder family boycotted the 10 January 1977 ceremony "to make a statement favoring amnesty for [[Vietnam War]] draft resisters".<ref>[http://www.medaloffreedom.com/FAQ.htm Presidential Medal of Freedom website: Frequently Asked Questions page]</ref>
Alexander Calder was born in Philadelphia. He was the son of Alexander Stirling Calder and the grandson of Alexander Milne Calder, both well-known sculptors. He studied mechanical engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology, and art at the Art Students League in New York City. In 1925, after doing line drawings for the National Police Gazette he published his first book, "Animal Sketches", in brush and ink. His oil paintings of urban scenes were painted in a loose and easy style. In 1926, he began to carve primitivist figures in tropical woods, which remained an important medium in his work until 1930. In 1931, after a visit to abstract artist Piet Mondrian's studio, he did his first non-objective construction.


In 1987, the Calder Foundation was founded by Calder's family. The Foundation not only serves as his official Estate, but also "runs its own programs, collaborates on exhibitions and publications, and gives advice on matters such as the history, assembly, and restoration of works by Calder."<ref>[http://calder.org/foundation/page/trustees.html Calder Foundation website: Trustees page]</ref> The U.S. copyright representative for the Calder Foundation is the [[Artists Rights Society]].<ref>[http://calder.org/home/page/about.html Calder Foundation website: Copyright and Disclaimers page]</ref> Calder's work is in many permanent collections across the world.
Alexander Calder made ingenious, witty use of natural and man-made materials including wire, sheet metal, wood and bronze to create his "mobiles," a name first used by Marcel Duchamp to describe this new idiom in modern art. Calder created mobiles (suspended, moving structures), standing mobiles (anchored, moving sculptures), and stabiles (stationary constructions). His first mobiles were motor driven, later they were wind driven to enable all parts to move independently of each other "by nature and chance" as Calder worded it.


In 2003, nearly 30 years after his death, an untitled work of his sold for $5.2 million at Christie's New York.<ref>[http://artsalesindex.artinfo.com/artsalesindex/aps/lots/8345195 Auction Results: Alexander Calder's Untitled]</ref>
In 1935, after attending classes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumier, Paris, Calder made his first wire sculptures. Calder worked in many art forms including drawing, oil painting, watercolor, etching, gouache and serigraphy. He also designed jewelry, tapestry, theatre settings and architectural interiors. He died in 1976.


==Quotes==
==Quotes==
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* {{Google video | id = -5552815781795311388 | title = 5' 56" Video of Calder Mobile at the National Gallery of Art }}
* {{Google video | id = -5552815781795311388 | title = 5' 56" Video of Calder Mobile at the National Gallery of Art }}
* [http://www.berkshiremuseum.org/galleries/calder.html Alexander Calder toys at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, MA]
* [http://www.berkshiremuseum.org/galleries/calder.html Alexander Calder toys at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, MA]
* [http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonlne/caldalex/ Alexander Calder papers online at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art]
* [http://www.aaa.si.edu/collectionsonline/caldalex/ Alexander Calder papers online at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art]
* [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf9c6007cz/ Guide to the Calder-Hayes Family Papers] at [[The Bancroft Library]]
* [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf9c6007cz/ Guide to the Calder-Hayes Family Papers] at [[The Bancroft Library]]
* {{fr}} [http://www.moreeuw.com/histoire-art/alexander-calder.htm Alexander Calder]
* {{fr}} [http://www.moreeuw.com/histoire-art/alexander-calder.htm Alexander Calder]

Revision as of 00:57, 5 May 2010

For other people named Alexander Calder, see Alexander Calder (disambiguation).
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder, 1947, by Carl van Vechten
Born
Alexander Calder
NationalityUnited States
EducationStevens Institute of Technology, Art Students League of New York
Known forArtist
Notable workCirque Calder (1926-1931), Aztec Josephine Baker (c. 1929), International Mobile (1949), Flamingo (Chicago, 1973)
MovementSurrealism


Alexander Calder (22 July 1898 – 11 November 1976), also known as Sandy Calder, was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing the mobile. In addition to mobile and stabile sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry and jewelry.

Childhood

Born in Lawnton, Pennsylvania, on July 22, 1898, Calder came from a family of artists. His father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was a well-known sculptor who created many public installations, a majority of them in Philadelphia. Calder’s grandfather, sculptor Alexander Milne Calder, was born in Scotland and immigrated to Philadelphia in 1868. He is best-known for the colossal statue of William Penn on top of Philadelphia's City Hall tower. Calder’s mother, Nanette Lederer Calder, was a professional portrait painter who studied at the Académie Julian and the Sorbonne in Paris from around 1888 until 1893. She then moved to Philadelphia where she met Alexander Stirling Calder while studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.[1] Calder’s parents were married on 22 February 1895. His older sister, Margaret "Peggy" Calder, was born in 1896. Her married name was Margaret Calder Hayes, and she was instrumental in the development of the UC Berkeley Art Museum.[2]

In 1902, at the age of four, Calder posed nude for his father’s sculpture The Man Cub, which is now located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In that same year, he completed his earliest sculpture, a clay elephant.[3]

Three years later, when Calder was seven and his sister was nine, Stirling Calder contracted tuberculosis and Calder’s parents moved to a ranch in Oracle, Arizona, leaving the children in the care of family friends for a year.[4] The children were reunited with their parents in late March, 1906 and stayed at the ranch in Arizona until fall of the same year.[5]

After Arizona, the Calder family moved to Pasadena, California. The windowed cellar of the family home became Calder's first studio and he received his first set of tools. He used scraps of copper wire that he found in the streets to make jewelry and beads for his sister’s dolls. On January 1, 1907, Calder’s mother took him to the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, where he observed a four-horse-chariot race. This style of event later became the finale of Calder’s wire circus shows.[6]

In 1909, when Calder was in the fourth grade, he sculpted a dog and a duck out of sheet brass as Christmas gifts for his parents. The sculptures were three dimensional and the duck was kinetic because it rocked when gently tapped. These sculptures are frequently cited as early examples of Calder’s skill.[7]

In 1910, Stirling Calder’s rehabilitation was complete and the Calder family moved back to Philadelphia, where Alexander briefly attended the Germantown Academy, and then to Croton-on-Hudson in New York State.[8] In Croton, during his early high school years, Calder was befriended by the painter Everett Shinn with whom he built a gravity powered system of mechanical trains. As Calder described:

We ran the train on wooden rails held by spikes; a chunk of iron racing down the incline speeded the cars. We even lit up some cars with candle lights.[9]

After Croton, the Calders moved to Spuyten Duyvil to be closer to the Tenth Street Studio Building in Bronx, New York, where Stirling Calder rented a studio. While living in Spuyten Duyvil, Calder attended Yonkers High.

In 1912, Stirling Calder was appointed acting chief of the Department of Sculpture of the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.[10] He began work on sculptures for the exposition that was held in 1915. During Alexander Calder’s high school years between 1912 and 1915, the Calder family moved back and forth between New York and California. In each new location Calder’s parents reserved cellar space as a studio for their son. Toward the end of this period, Calder stayed with friends in California while his parents moved back to New York so that he could graduate from Lowell High School in San Francisco. Calder graduated in the class of 1915.

Early years

Red Mobile, 1956. Painted sheet metal and metal rods, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Although Calder’s parents encouraged his creativity as a child, they discouraged their children from becoming artists, knowing that it was an uncertain and financially difficult career. In 1915, Calder decided to study mechanical engineering after learning about the discipline from a classmate at Lowell High School named Hyde Lewis. Stirling Calder arranged for his son's enrollment at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Calder joined the football team during his freshman year at Stevens and practiced with the team all four years, but he never played in a game. He also played lacrosse, at which he was more successful. He was a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. He excelled in the subject of mathematics.

In the summer of 1916, Calder spent five weeks training at the Plattsburg Civilian Military Training Camp. In 1917, he joined the Student’s Army Training Corps, Naval Section, at Stevens and was made guide of the battalion.

I learned to talk out of the side of my mouth and have never been quite able to correct it since.[11]

Calder received a degree from Stevens in 1919. For the next several years, he worked a variety of engineering jobs, including working as a hydraulics engineer and a draughtsman for the New York Edison Company, but he was not content in any of the roles.

In June 1922, Calder started work as a fireman in the boiler room of the passenger ship H. F. Alexander. While the ship sailed from San Francisco to New York City, Calder worked on deck off the Guatemalan Coast and witnessed both the sun rising and the moon setting on opposite horizons. As he described in his autobiography:

It was early one morning on a calm sea, off Guatemala, when over my couch — a coil of rope — I saw the beginning of a fiery red sunrise on one side and the moon looking like a silver coin on the other.

The H.F. Alexander docked in San Francisco and Calder traveled up to Aberdeen, Washington where his sister lived with her husband, Kenneth Hayes. Calder took a job as a timekeeper at a logging camp. The mountain scenery inspired him to write home to request paints and brushes. Shortly after this, Calder decided to move back to New York to pursue a career as an artist.

Art career

Flamingo 1974, in the Federal Plaza, Chicago, Illinois.

Having decided to become an artist, Calder moved to New York and enrolled at the Art Students' League. While a student, he worked for the National Police Gazette where, in 1925, one of his assignments was sketching the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. Calder became fascinated with the circus, a theme that would reappear in his later work.

In 1926, Calder moved to Paris where he established a studio at 22 rue Daguerre in the Montparnasse Quarter. At the suggestion of a Serbian toy merchant, he began to create toys with articulation. He never found the toy merchant again, but, at the urging of fellow sculptor Jose de Creeft, he submitted his toys to the Salon des Humoristes. Later that fall, Calder began to create his Cirque Calder, a miniature circus fashioned from wire, string, rubber, cloth, and other found objects. Designed to fit into suitcases (it eventually grew to fill five), the circus was portable, and allowed Calder to hold performances on both sides of the Atlantic. He gave elaborately improvised shows, recreating the performance of a real circus. Soon, his "Cirque Calder"[1][2] (usually on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art) became popular with the Parisian avant-garde. Some months Calder would charge an entrance fee to pay his rent.[3][4]

In 1927, Calder returned to the United States. He designed several kinetic wooden push and pull toys for children, which he had mass-produced by the Gould Manufacturing Company, in Oshkosh, WI. His originals, as well as playable replicas, are on display in the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

In 1928, Calder held his first solo show at a commercial gallery at the Weyhe Gallery in New York City. In 1934, he had his first solo museum exhibition in the United States at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.

In 1929, Calder had his first solo show of wire sculpture in Paris at Galerie Billiet. The painter Jules Pascin, a friend of Calder's from the cafes of Montparnasse, wrote the preface.

In June 1929, while traveling from Paris to New York, Calder met his future wife, Louisa James, grandniece of author Henry James and philosopher William James. They married in 1931.

Man, a "stabile" by Alexander Calder; Terre des Hommes (Expo 67 fairground), Saint Helen's Island, Montreal.

While in Paris, Calder met and became friends with a number of avant-garde artists, including Joan Miró, Jean Arp, and Marcel Duchamp. A visit to Piet Mondrian's studio in 1930 "shocked" him into embracing abstract art.

The Cirque Calder can be seen as the start of Calder's interest in both wire sculpture and kinetic art. He maintained a sharp eye with respect to the engineering balance of the sculptures and utilized these to develop the kinetic sculptures Duchamp would ultimately dub as "mobiles," a French pun meaning both "mobile" and "motive." He designed some of the characters in the circus to perform suspended from a thread. However, it was the mixture of his experiments to develop purely abstract sculpture following his visit with Mondrian that lead to his first truly kinetic sculptures, manipulated by means of cranks and pulleys.

By the end of 1931, he had quickly moved on to more delicate sculptures which derived their motion from the air currents in the room. From this, Calder's true "mobiles" were born. At the same time, Calder was also experimenting with self-supporting, static, abstract sculptures, dubbed "stabiles" by Arp to differentiate them from mobiles.

Calder and Louisa returned to America in 1933 to settle in a farmhouse they purchased in Roxbury, Connecticut, where they raised a family (first daughter, Sandra born 1935, second daughter, Mary, in 1939). Calder continued to give "Cirque Calder" performances but also worked with Martha Graham, designing stage sets for her ballets and created a moving stage construction to accompany Eric Satie's Socrate in 1936.

His first public commission was a pair of mobiles designed for the theater opened in 1937 in the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

During World War II, Calder attempted to join the Marines as a camofleur, but was rejected. Instead, he continued to sculpt, but a scarcity of metal led to him producing work in carved wood.

Calder's first retrospective was held in 1938 at George Walter Vincent Smith Gallery in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1943, the Museum of Modern Art hosted a well-received Calder retrospective, curated by James Johnson Sweeney and Marcel Duchamp.

Calder was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. His mobile, International Mobile was the centerpiece of the exhibition and still hangs in 2007 where it was originally placed in 1949.

In the 1950s, Calder increasingly concentrated his efforts on producing monumental sculptures. Notable examples are ".125" for JFK Airport in 1957, "La Spirale" for UNESCO in Paris 1958 and "L'Homme" ("Man") for Expo '67 in Montreal. Calder's largest sculpture, at 20.5 m high, was "El Sol Rojo", constructed for the Olympic games in Mexico City.

In 1962, he settled into his new workshop Carroi, a very futuristic design and overlooking the valley of the Lower Chevrière to Saché in Indre-et-Loire (France). He did not hesitate to offer his gouaches and small mobile to his friends in the country, he even donated to the town of a stabile trônant since 1974 in front of the church: an anti-sculpture free from gravity.

He did make the most of its stabiles and mobiles at factory Biémont Tours (France), including "the Man", all stainless steel 24 meters tall, commissioned by Canada's International Nickel (Inco) for the Exposition Universelle de Montréal in 1967. All products are made from a model made by Calder, by the research department (headed by M. Porcheron, with Alain Roy, François Lopez, Michel Juigner ...) to design to 'scale, then by workers qualified boilermakers for manufacturing, Calder overseeing all operations, and if necessary amending the work. All stabiles will be manufactured in carbon steel, then painted for a major part in black, except the man who will be raw stainless steel , the mobiles are made of aluminum and made of duralumin.

Untitled 1968, painted steel, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon, Portugal.

In 1966, Calder published his Autobiography with Pictures with the help of his son-in-law, Jean Davidson.

In June 1969, Calder attended the dedication of his monumental stabile “La Grande Vitesse” located in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan. This sculpture is notable for being the first public work of art in the United States to be funded with federal monies; acquired with funds granted from the then new National Endowment for the Arts under its “Art for Public Places” program.

Calder created a sculpture called WTC Stabile (also known as Bent Propeller), which in 1971 was installed at the entrance of the World Trade Center's North Tower. When Battery Park City opened, the sculpture was moved to Vesey and Church Streets.[12] It stood in front of 7 World Trade Center when it was destroyed on September 11, 2001.[13]

Calder died on 11 November 1976, shortly following the opening of another major retrospective show at the Whitney Museum in New York. Calder had been working on a third plane, entitled Tribute to Mexico, when he died.

Calder's paintings

File:Untitled gouache on paper by Alexander Calder, 1967, --Honolulu Academy of Arts--.jpg
Untitled gouache on paper by Alexander Calder, 1967, Honolulu Academy of Arts

In addition to sculptures, Calder continued to paint. In 1973, he was commissioned by Braniff International Airways to paint a full-size DC-8-62 as a "flying canvas," In 1975, Calder completed a second plane, this time a Boeing 727-227, as a tribute to the U.S. Bicentennial. In 1975, he was commissioned by BMW to paint the a BMW 3.0 CSL which would come to be the first vehicle in the BMW Art Car Project.

Legacy

Two months after his death, Calder was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, by President Gerald Ford. However, representatives of the Calder family boycotted the 10 January 1977 ceremony "to make a statement favoring amnesty for Vietnam War draft resisters".[14]

In 1987, the Calder Foundation was founded by Calder's family. The Foundation not only serves as his official Estate, but also "runs its own programs, collaborates on exhibitions and publications, and gives advice on matters such as the history, assembly, and restoration of works by Calder."[15] The U.S. copyright representative for the Calder Foundation is the Artists Rights Society.[16] Calder's work is in many permanent collections across the world.

In 2003, nearly 30 years after his death, an untitled work of his sold for $5.2 million at Christie's New York.[17]

Quotes

"How can art be realized?

Out of volumes, motion, spaces bounded by the great space, the universe.

Out of different masses, tight, heavy, middling--indicated by variations of size or color--directional line--vectors which represent speeds, velocities, accelerations, forces, etc. . . .--these directions making between them meaningful angles, and senses, together defining one big conclusion or many.

Spaces, volumes, suggested by the smallest means in contrast to their mass, or even including them, juxtaposed, pierced by vectors, crossed by speeds.

Nothing at all of this is fixed.

Each element able to move, to stir, to oscillate, to come and go in its relationships with the other elements in its universe.

It must not be just a fleeting moment but a physical bond between the varying events in life.

Not extractions,

But abstractions

Abstractions that are like nothing in life except in their manner of reacting."[18]

- From Abstraction-Création, Art Non Figuratif, no. 1, 1932.

Selected works

  • Dog (1909), folded brass sheet; this was made as a present for Calder's parents
  • The Flying Trapeze (1925), oil on canvas, 36 x 42 in.
  • Elephant (c. 1928), wire and wood, 11 1/2 x 5 3/4 x 29.2 in.
  • Two Acrobats (ca. 1928), Brass wire, painted wood base, Honolulu Academy of Arts
  • Aztec Josephine Baker (c. 1929), wire, 53" x 10" x 9". A representation of Josephine Baker, the exuberant lead dancer from La Révue Nègre at the Folies Bergère.
  • Untitled (1931), wire, wood and motor; one of the first kinetic mobiles.
  • Feathers (1931), wire, wood and paint; first true mobile, although designed to stand on a desktop
  • Cone d'ebene (1933), ebony, metal bar and wire; early suspended mobile (first was made in 1932).
  • Form Against Yellow (1936), sheet metal, wire, plywood, string and paint; wall- supported mobile.
  • Object with Yellow Background (1936), Painted wood, metal, string, Honolulu Academy of Arts
  • Mercury Fountain (1937), sheet metal and mercury
  • Devil Fish (1937), sheet metal, bolts and paint; first piece made from a model.
  • 1939 New York World's Fair (maquette) (1938), sheet metal, wire, wood, string and paint
  • Necklace (c. 1938), brass wire, glass and mirror
  • Sphere Pierced by Cylinders (1939), wire and paint; the first of many floor standing, life size stabiles (predating Anthony Caro's plinthless sculptures by two decades)
  • Lobster Trap and Fish Tail (1939), sheet metal, wire and paint (suspended mobile); design for the stairwell of the Museum of Modern Art, New York
  • Black Beast (1940), sheet metal, bolts and paint; freestanding plinthless stabile)
  • S-Shaped Vine (1946), sheet metal, wire and paint (suspended mobile)
  • Sword Plant (1947) sheet metal, wire and paint (Standing Mobile)
  • Snow Flurry (1948), sheet metal, wire and paint (suspended mobile)
  • .125 (1957), steel plate, rods and paint
  • La Spirale (1958), steel plate, rod and paint, 360" high; public monumental mobile for Maison de l'U.N.E.S.C.O., Paris
  • Teodelapio (1962), steel plate and paint, monumental stabile, Spoleto, Italy
  • Man (1967) stainless steel plate, bolts and paint, 65' x 83' x 53', monumental stabile, Montreal Canada
  • La Grande Vitesse (1969), steel plate, bolts and paint, 43' x 55' x 25', Grand Rapids, Michigan
  • Eagle (1971), steel plate, bolts and paint, 38'9" x 32'8" x 32'8", Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle, Washington
  • White and Red Boomerang (1971), Painted metal, wire, Honolulu Academy of Arts
  • Stegosaurus (1973), steel plate, bolts and paint, 50' tall, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
  • Cheval Rouge (Red Horse)Image:National Gallery of Art DC 2007i.jpg (1974), red painted sheet metal, at the National Gallery, Washington, D.C.
  • Flamingo (1974), red painted steel, at the Federal Plaza, Chicago, Illinois
  • The Red Feather (1975), black and red painted steel, 11' x 6'3" x 11'2", The Kentucky Center
  • Untitled (1976), aluminum honeycomb, tubing and paint, 358 1/2 x 912", National Gallery of Art Washington, D.C.
  • Mountains and Clouds (1976), painted aluminum and steel, 612 inches x 900 inches, Hart Senate Office Building
  • The Big Sail (1966), this 33 ton metal sculpture is composed of five intersecting forms, four planes, and one curve. It stands 40 feet tall, on the campus of MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Bibliography

  • Calder, Alexander. An Autobiography With Pictures. Pantheon Books, 1966, ISBN 978-0-394-42142-1
  • Guerrero, Pedro E. Calder at Home. The Joyous Environment of Alexander Calder. Stewart, Tabori & Chang, New York, 1998, ISBN 1-55670-655-3
  • Prather, Marla. Alexander Calder 1898 - 1976. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 1998, ISBN 0-89468-228-8, ISBN 0-300-07518-9
  • Rosenthal, Mark, and Alexander S. C. Rower. The Surreal Calder. The Menil Collection, Houston, 2005, ISBN 0-939594-60-9
  • Rower, Alexander S. C. Calder Sculpture. Universe Publishing, 1998, ISBN 0-7893-0134-2

References

  1. ^ Herbert Palmer Gallery - Nanette Calder
  2. ^ Hayes, Margaret Calder, Three Alexander Calders: A Family Memoir. Middlebury, VT: Paul S Eriksson, 1977.
  3. ^ Calder, Alexander and Davidson, Jean, Calder, An Autobiography with Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966, p. 13.
  4. ^ Calder, Alexander and Davidson, Jean, Calder, An Autobiography with Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966, p. 15.
  5. ^ Calder Foundation
  6. ^ Calder, Alexander and Davidson, Jean, Calder, An Autobiography with Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966, pp. 21-22.
  7. ^ Hayes, Margaret Calder, Three Alexander Calders: A Family Memoir. Middlebury, VT: Paul S Eriksson, 1977, p. 41.
  8. ^ Calder, Alexander and Davidson, Jean, Calder, An Autobiography with Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966, pp. 28-29.
  9. ^ Calder, Alexander and Davidson, Jean, Calder, An Autobiography with Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966, p. 31.
  10. ^ Calder Foundation
  11. ^ Calder, Alexander and Davidson, Jean, Calder, An Autobiography with Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966, p. 47.
  12. ^ Wenegrat, Saul (2002-02-28). "Public Art at the World Trade Center". International Foundation for Art Research. Retrieved 2007-07-27.
  13. ^ Lives and Treasures Taken, The Library of Congress Retrieved 27 July, 2007.
  14. ^ Presidential Medal of Freedom website: Frequently Asked Questions page
  15. ^ Calder Foundation website: Trustees page
  16. ^ Calder Foundation website: Copyright and Disclaimers page
  17. ^ Auction Results: Alexander Calder's Untitled
  18. ^ Alexander Calder, "Comment réaliser l'art?" from Abstraction-Création, Art Non Figuratif, no. 1, 1932
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