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Alexander Calder

Abstraction-Creation, Mobiles, Stabiles

(Philadelphie, 1898 - New York, 1976)

Alexander Calder was born in 1898 in an artistic family: his grand-father, Alexander Milne Calder, and his father, Alexander Stirling Calder, were renowned sculptors, while his mother, Nanette Lederer Calder, was a painter. As a child, Calder has his own studio and created jewellery for his sister’s dolls, or animals in brass with little piece of scrap iron.

Alexander Calder made studies of mechanic engineering but in 1923 he entered the Art Student League of New York for study painting. Illustrator for the National Police Gazette, then for Barnum Circus posters, he became passionate for the circus theme. His passion products in 1926 the Calder’s Circle, plays in which the artist was the puppeteer with figures made in wire.

Calder lived in Paris since 1926. He frequented the Grande Chaumière Academy. He started to product articulated toys and made representations of his Circus that delight artists of Parisian Avant – garde. His first solo show is organized in New York in 1928. His meet with Piet Mondrian in 1930 will be determinant for his artwork. He abandoned the figurative sculpture and adopted a coloured and abstract sculptural language.

In 1931, he joined the “Abstraction – Creation” Group with Piet Mondrian, Hans Arp, Robert Delaunay and Jean Hélion, and started create mobile in wire. The artiste creates sculptures with separate mobiles elements activated by air or electrical motor: Marcel Duchamp called them Mobiles. Calder’s stationary sculptures are called Stabiles.

Back to United States in 1933, Calder became renowned. He continues to give representations of Calder’s Circle, and collaborates to play with Martha Graham or Erik Satie. The artistes invents multitudes of variants of his assemblies and received from 1950 numerous public orders. He received honours from Venice Biennale in 1952. Calder focuses on monumental sculptures, including La Spirale in 1958, a mobile for UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris.

In 1962, he settled in a new studio in Saché (Indre-et-Loire) to develop big size project. He knows recognition in 1964 thanks to a retrospective in Guggenheim Museum in New York.

His art renews itself in 1974 with figures cutting in vive colours sheet metal – Crags and Critters. Calder carries out another activity in parallel: engraver and lithography. He died in 1976 in New York, came to inaugurate a retrospective of his art.

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