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In this video, Twinkl Teacher Jack takes a look at Alexander Calder in our Famous Artists For Kids series, including Alexander Calder facts about the sculpto...
- 3 min
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- Twinkl Teaches KS2
Jump into the wonderful world of Alexander Calder. Fly with the acrobats and get lost in colour …Play, make and learn about art and artists on Tate Kids http...
- 2 min
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- Tate Kids
Introduce children to famous artworks and details about Alexander Calder. Use this done-for-you digital storybook to look at the works of this famous artist and introduce students to a...
- 5 min
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Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in 1898 in Lawnton, Pennsylvania. His birthdate remains a source of confusion. According to Calder's mother, Nanette (née Lederer), Calder was born on August 22, yet his birth certificate at Philadelphia City Hall, based on a hand-written ledger, stated July 22. When Calder's family learned of the birth certificate...
Alexander Calder's parents did not want him to be an artist, so he decided to study mechanical engineering. An intuitive engineer since childhood, Calder did not even know what mechanical engineering was. "I was not very sure what this term meant, but I thought I'd better adopt it," he later wrote. He enrolled at the Stevens Institute of Technology...
Sculpture
In Paris in 1926, Calder began to create his Cirque Calder, a miniature circus fashioned from wire, cloth, string, rubber, cork, and other found objects. Designed to be transportable (it grew to fill five large suitcases), the circus was presented on both sides of the Atlantic. Soon, his Cirque Calder (on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art at present) became popular with the Parisian avant-garde. He also invented wire sculpture, or "drawing in space", and in 1929 had his first solo sh...
Monumental sculptures
In 1934, Calder made his first outdoor works in his Roxbury, Connecticutstudio, using the same techniques and materials as his smaller works. Exhibited outside, Calder's initial standing mobiles moved elegantly in the breeze, bobbing and swirling in natural, spontaneous rhythms. The first few outdoor works were too delicate for strong winds, which forced Calder to rethink his fabrication process. By 1936 he changed his working methods and began to create smaller-scale maquettes that he then e...
Theatrical productions
Calder created stage sets for more than a dozen theatrical productions, including Nucléa, Horizon, and most notably, Martha Graham's Panorama (1935), a production of the Erik Satie symphonic drama Socrate (1936), and later, Works in Progress (1968). Works in Progresswas a "ballet" conceived by Calder himself and produced at the Rome Opera House, featuring an array of mobiles, stabiles, and large painted backdrops. Calder would describe some of his stage sets as dancers performing a choreograp...
Calder's first solo exhibition was in 1927 at the Gallery of Jacques Seligmann in Paris. His first solo show in a US commercial gallery was in 1928 at the Weyhe Gallery in New York City. He exhibited with the Abstraction-Création group in Paris in 1933. In 1935, he had his first solo museum exhibition in the United States at The Renaissance Society...
Calder's work is in many permanent collections across the world. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, has the largest body of work by Alexander Calder. Other museum collections include the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina ...
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Calder's works were not highly sought after, and when they sold, it was often for relatively little money. A copy of a Pierre Matisse sales ledger in the foundation's files shows that only a few pieces in the 1941 show found buyers, one of whom, Solomon R. Guggenheim, paid only $233.34 (equivalent to $4,299 in 202...
Beginning in 1966, winners of the National Magazine Awards are awarded an "Ellie", a copper-colored stabile resembling an elephant, which was designed by Calder. Two months after his death, the artist was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, by President Gerald Ford. However, representat...
Calder and his wife, Louisa, were the parents of two daughters, Sandra (born 1935) and Mary (1939-2011). Mary's husband, Howard Rower (1939-2000), had been chairman of the board of the Alexander and Louisa Calder Foundation. Mary and Howard's two sons are Alexander S. C. "Sandy" Rower (1963), president of the Calder Foundation, and Holton Rower (19...
L'empennage(1953), Scottish National Gallery of Modern ArtAcoustic Ceiling (1953), Aula Magna, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas, VenezuelaLa Ciudad(1960), Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas - VenezuelaThe Four Elements(1961), Moderna Museet, installation at the museum entranceMeet Alexander Calder. The man that made modern art move! Find out who is Alexander Calder with this art homework guide, includes facts for kids.
Alexander Calder was an American artist. He was born in 1898 in Pennsylvania, USA and died in 1976. Sculptures are usually still as people walk around them, but Calder's sculptures move.
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U.S. artist Alexander Calder created playful three-dimensional artworks. He was particularly known for his large sculptures and mobiles—works of art that move.
