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- Impressed by the work of Juan Miró, Jean Arp, and Fernand Léger, he created his first abstract stabiles in 1930. These works also owe much to the rectilinear designs of Piet Mondrian.
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Jan 8, 2018 · The massive public sculptures that Calder created later in life—including Man (1967) in Montreal and .125 (1957) in what is now New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport—have their beginnings several decades earlier. In 1933, the previously urbanite Calder purchased an 18-acre country home in Connecticut that allowed his work to ...
Nov 27, 2017 · Calder’s background made him one of the few American artists to emerge from a legacy of art-making. Both his father and his grandfather were Philadelphia sculptors.
In the early 1930s, inspired by the color and composition of Piet Mondrian's work, Calder created his breakthrough mobiles. At first these abstract sculptures were motorized; later Calder modified his design to allow free-floating movement, powered only by air currents.
- 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
May 11, 2021 · Through these inventive performances, Calder was introduced to friends and fellow artists, among them Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, Fernand Léger and Jean Arp, who would profoundly influence the trajectory of his extraordinary career.
Dec 8, 2021 · There are few artists whose work is as universally loved as American sculptor Alexander Calder. For the famous art collector power couple Irma & Norman Braman — the driving force behind the founding of Art Basel Miami — Calder’s work even prompted the start of an impressive art collection.
Nov 15, 2018 · Few artists have shaped the scope of art in the 20th century as much as Joan Miró and Alexander Calder. Their remarkably similar artistic sensibilities revolutionized their respective mediums of painting and sculpture.
