Alexander Calder

Overview

Alexander Calder is internationally celebrated for his groundbreaking kinetic mobiles and static stabiles – ingenious sheet metal sculptures that range from intimate to monumental in scale. The son of artists, Calder began making art at a young age. After earning a degree in engineering, he moved to New York in 1923 to study at the Art Students League. In 1926, he relocated to Paris to continue his training at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.

During this period, Calder began working with wire, crafting linear portraits of friends and cultural figures. These early works brought him recognition, leading to exhibitions in New York, Paris, and Berlin. In 1931, he created his first kinetic sculptures – initially motorised, but soon animated by natural air currents – ushering in the era of his iconic suspended mobiles. After returning to the United States in 1933, Calder began producing large-scale, bolted sheet metal sculptures for outdoor settings.

His work gained attention at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York and led to numerous public commissions. During the war years, Calder turned to more readily available materials – wood and wire – to create his delicate Constellations. From the 1940s onwards, he focused increasingly on large-scale commissions and significant museum exhibitions, working closely with long-time dealers Curt Valentin and later Perls Galleries in New York, as well as Galerie Maeght in Paris.

Calder was honoured with major retrospectives during his lifetime, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1943); the Guggenheim Museum, New York (1964); Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence (1969); and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1976). His work is held in leading public and private collections worldwide, including Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

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Works