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Alexander "Sandy" 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]
Alexander Calder is known for inventing wire sculptures and the mobile, a type of kinetic art which relied on careful weighting to achieve balance and suspension in the air. Initially Calder used motors to make his works move, but soon abandoned this method and began using air currents alone.
Alexander Calder (born July 22, 1898, Lawnton, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died November 11, 1976, New York, New York) was an American artist best known for his innovation of the mobile suspended sheet metal and wire assemblies that are activated in space by air currents.
- Lynne Warren
- 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.
Jan 18, 2019 · Alexander Calder was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously two weeks after his death after refusing it himself in the last year of his life. His family refused to attend the ceremony in protest against the lack of amnesty for Vietnam War draft resisters.
Dec 4, 2015 · The American artist Alexander Calder (1898–1976) probably best known for his abstract coloured ‘mobiles’ as well as his large outdoor sculptures, was a key figure in the history of 20th-century art. Tate Etc. talks to his grandson.
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Mar 11, 2024 · Alexander Calder (1898–1976) was an American sculptor who is today regarded as one of the most influential figures in the development of kinetic art. Originally trained as an engineer before he pursued art, Calder gained recognition beginning in the 1930s for his innovative mobile sculptures, which are distinguished by their suspended and ...