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The first biography of America's greatest twentieth-century sculptor, Alexander Calder: an authoritative and revelatory achievement, based on a wealth of letters and papers never before...
- Jed Perl
- Summary of Alexander Calder
- Accomplishments
- Biography of Alexander Calder
American artist Alexander Calder redefined sculpture by introducing the element of movement, first through performances of his Cirque Calderand later with motorized works and, finally, with hanging works called "mobiles." In addition to his abstract mobiles, Calder also created static sculptures, called "stabiles," as well as paintings, jewelry, th...
Many artists made contour line drawings on paper, but Calder was the first to use wire to create three-dimensional line "drawings" of people, animals, and objects. These "drawings in space" introdu...Calder shifted from figurative linear sculptures in wire to nonobjective forms in motion by creating the first mobiles. Composed of pivoting lengths of wire counterbalanced with thin metal elements...Childhood
Alexander Calder was born into a long line of sculptors, being part of the fourth generation to take up the art form. Constructing objects from a very young age, his first known art tool was a pair of pliers. At eight, Calder was creating jewelry for his sister's dolls from beads and copper wire. Over the next few years, as his family moved to Pasadena, Philadelphia, New York, and San Francisco, he crafted small animal figures and game boards from scavenged wood and brass, and in 1909, he mad...
Early Training
In 1922, he took evening drawing classes at the 42nd Street New York Public School. The next year he studied painting at the Arts Students League (1923-1925), with John Sloan and George Lukswhile working as an illustrator for the National Police Gazette. An assignment to illustrate acts at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus led to his interest in the circus. In 1926, after showing paintings at The Artists' Gallery in New York he moved to Paris. Once there, he began making the mo...
Mature Period
In the late 1920s Calder created more figurative oil paintings, but a 1930 visit to Piet Mondrian'sstudio led Calder to shift from figuration to abstraction permanently. Upon entering the studio, Calder became fixated on the overall space and the colored cardboard rectangles covering one of the walls: he said he would like to make them “oscillate.” Calder began painting and sculpting in the abstract. In 1931 he accepted an invitation to join the influential Abstraction-Creation group. That sa...
- American
- July 22, 1898
- Lawnton, Pennsylvania
- November 11, 1976
Apr 15, 2024 · His legacy continues to influence contemporary artists and the broader field of kinetic art, promoting interdisciplinary creativity and innovation that transcends traditional boundaries between different art forms and disciplines.
Dec 4, 2015 · One of his great innovations – that of the mobile, an entirely new art form – was based on his desire to see sculpture move. But he always had an interest in movement, which can be seen even in his Cirque Calder 1926–31 and the early, wire sculptures.
- The term ‘drawing in space’ was first used to describe Calder’s wire sculpture. It is commonly believed that artist Julio González coined the term ‘drawing in space’ in 1932, when he wrote about Pablo Picasso’s iron sculptures of 1928, which Picasso had adapted from some of his earlier line drawings.
- He invented the mobile. The idea of a mobile is now so ingrained in the collective imagination that it is difficult to believe there was a time when it did not exist.
- Duchamp wasn’t the only artist to name Calder’s objects. After he heard that Duchamp had dubbed Calder’s moving objects mobiles, their mutual friend, the abstract artist Jean Arp, sardonically asked Calder, ‘Well, what were those things you did last year — stabiles?’
- In 1943 he was the youngest artist ever to receive a retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1929 Abby Aldrich Rockefeller founded the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Alexander Calder (/ ˈkɔːldər /; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and his monumental public sculptures. [1]
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Jun 17, 2012 · Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy. The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University presented an exhibition that provided a fresh perspective on modern sculptor Alexander Calder (1898-1976) and his influence on a new generation of artists.
