Photo: Herbert Matter © 2021 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Alexander Calder was born in 1898, the second child of artist parents—his father was a sculptor and his mother a painter. In his mid-twenties, Calder moved to New York City, where he studied at the Art Students League and worked at the ‘National Police Gazette,’ illustrating sporting events and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Shortly after his move to Paris in 1926, Calder created his ‘Cirque Calder’ (1926–31), a complex and unique body of art. It wasn’t long before his performances of the ‘Cirque’ captured the attention of the Parisian avant-garde.
In 1931, a significant turning point in Calder’s artistic career occurred when he created his first kinetic nonobjective sculpture and gave form to an entirely new type of art. Some of the earliest of these objects moved by motors and were dubbed ‘mobiles’ by Marcel Duchamp—in French, mobile refers to both ‘motion’ and ‘motive.’ Calder soon abandoned the mechanical aspects of these works and developed suspended mobiles that would undulate on their own with the air’s currents. In response to Duchamp, Jean Arp named Calder’s stationary objects ‘stabiles’ as a means of differentiating them.
Calder returned to live in the United States with his wife, Louisa, in 1933, purchasing a dilapidated farmhouse in the rural town of Roxbury, Connecticut. It was there that he made his first sculptures for the outdoors, installing large-scale standing mobiles among the rolling hills of his property. In 1943, James Johnson Sweeney and Duchamp organized a major retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which catapulted Calder to the forefront of the New York art world and cemented his status as one of the premier American contemporary artists.
In 1953, Calder and Louisa moved back to France, ultimately settling in the small town of Saché in the Indre-et-Loire. Calder shifted his focus to large-scale commissioned works, which would dominate his practice in the last decades of his life. These included such works as ‘Spirale’ (1958) for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris and ‘Flamingo’ (1973) for Chicago’s Federal Center Plaza. Calder died at the age of seventy-eight in 1976, a few weeks after his major retrospective, ‘Calder’s Universe,’ opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Alexander Calder
Biography
Print BiographyThe Art Students League of New York 1923 – 1925
Stevens Institute of Technology 1915 – 1919
Solo Exhibitions
Kunsthal Rotterdam, 'Calder Now', Rotterdam, Netherlands
MoMA Museum of Modern Art, 'Alexander Calder. Modern from the Start', New York NY
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 'Calder: Great Yellow Sun', Tel Aviv, Israel
Storm King Art Center, 'Calder Hillside', New Windsor NY (Permanent Exhibtion)
National Gallery of Art, 'Calder Tower', Washington DC (Permanent Exhibition)
Palazzo Collicola – Galleria d’Arte Moderna, 'Calder Gallery', Spoleto, Italy (Permanent Exhibition)
Heather James, 'Alexander Calder: Bold Gouaches', New York NY
Galerie Alexandre Guillemain, 'Alexander Calder (1898-1976). Tapisseries', Paris, France
K Museum of Contemporary Art, 'Calder on Paper', Seoul, South Korea
Hauser & Wirth, 'Calder', St. Moritz, Switzerland
Art Pavilion, 'Magic of a Sculptural Movement', Zagreb, Croatia
Pace Gallery, 'Calder: Small Sphere and Heavy Sphere', New York NY
Galeria Elvira González, 'Calder. Gouaches', Madrid, Spain
Huxley-Parlour Gallery, 'Alexander Calder: Works on Paper', London, UK
Centro Botín, 'Calder Stories', Santander, Spain
Grand Rapids Art Museum, 'Alexander Calder: Pour La Grande Vitesse and other Works on Paper', Grand Rapids MI
National Gallery of Victoria, 'Alexander Calder: Radical Inventor', Melbourne, Australia (Travelling Exhibition)
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 'Alexander Calder: Radical Inventor', Montreal, Canada (Travelling Exhibition)
Fundación Proa, 'Alexander Calder: Theater of Encounters', Buenos Aires, Argentina
Hauser & Wirth Somerset, 'Calder: From the Stony River to the Sky', Bruton, UK
Whitney Museum of American Art, 'Calder: Hypermobility', New York NY
Pushkin Museum, 'Alexander Calder: Retrospective', Moscow, Russia
Museo Jumex, 'Calder: Discipline of the Dance', Mexico City, Mexico
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein–Westfalen, 'Alexander Calder: Avant-Garde in Motion', Dusseldorf, Germany
Leeum – Samsung Museum of Art, 'Calder', Seoul, South Korea
Seattle Art Museum, 'Alexander Calder: A Balancing Act', Seattle WA
Norton Museum of Art, 'Calder Jewelry', West Palm Beach FL (Travelling Exhibition)
Château de Tours, 'Alexandre Calder en Touraine', Tours, France
Wadsworth Atheneum, 'Calder in Connecticut', Hartford CT
San Jose Museum of Art, 'Flying Colors: The Innovation and Artistry of Alexander Calder', San Jose CA
Fondation Maeght, 'Calder', Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France (Travelling Exhibition)
Galerie Maeght, 'Calder: Mobiles & Stabiles', Paris, France (Travelling Exhibition)
Addison Gallery of American Art, '17 Mobiles by Alexander Calder', Andover MA
Galerie Vignon, 'Calder: ses mobiles', Paris, France
Galerie Neumann-Nierendorf, 'Alexander Calder: Skulpturen aus Holz und aus Draht', Berlin, Germany
Galerie Billiet-Pierre Vorms, 'Sculptures bois et fil de fer de Alexander Calder', Paris, France
For a comprehensive list of exhibitions and publications, see www.calder.org
Selected Group Exhibitions
Hauser & Wirth, 'Drawing on the Mind', cur. Zhang Enli, Central, Hong Kong
Musée d'art de Pully, 'Calder, Soulages, Vasarely... Abstractions Plurielles (1950-1980). Collection de la Fondation Gandur pour l'Art', Pully, Switzerland
Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 'Moving Vision', Oklahoma City OK
De Young Museum, 'Calder-Picasso', San Francisco CA
Almine Rech Gallery, 'Still Life', Paris, France
IVAM Institut Valencia d’Art Modern, 'Mechanical and Technical Imaginaries in the IVAM Collection', Valencia, Spain
Skarstedt Gallery, 'Faces and Figures', New York NY
Van de Weghe Fine Art, 'Calder / Moore', New York NY
Luxembourg & Co., 'Lost in Italy', London, UK
Henry Moore Institute, 'Portable Sculpture', Leeds, UK
Museu Picasso, 'Picasso and Artist’s Jewelry', Barcelona, Spain
The Broad, 'Invisible Sun', Los Angeles CA
Olivier Malingue, 'Five Years', London, UK
Musée Matisse, 'Pierre Matisse: An Art Dealer in New York', Nice, France
High Museum of Art, 'Calder-Picasso', Atlanta GA
Palazzo Collicola – Galleria d’Arte Moderna, 'Work in Progress', Spoleto, Italy
Kicken Gallery, 'Calder X Mies: Reflections on Alexander Calder and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe', Berlin, Germany
Luxembourg & Dayan, 'Sound Lasting and Leaving', New York NY
Pace Gallery, 'Calder, Callahan, and the Intensified Image', New York NY
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 'Disonata: Art in Sound up to 1980', Madrid, Spain
Museum of Contemporary Art, 'Unfinished Business', Chicago IL
Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, 'The Fabric of Modernity: Matisse, Picasso, Miró…and French Tapestries', Munich, Germany
Fondation Louis Vuitton, 'Charlotte Perriand: Inventing a New World', Paris, France
Galerie Natalie Seroussi, 'Calder / Saraceno', Paris, France
MoMA Museum of Modern Art, 'Artist’s Choice: Amy Sillman—The Shape of Shape', New York NY
Centre Pompidou Metz, 'Constructed Worlds. A Choice of Sculptures from the Centre Pompidou', Metz, France
Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 'Dimensionism: Modern Art in the Age of Einstein', New Brunswick NJ
West Bund Museum, 'The Shape of Time: Highlights from the Centre Pompidou Collection. Vol. 1', Shanghai, China
Musée National Fernand Léger, 'Vis-à-vis III. Fernand Léger et ses ami.e.s.', Biot, France
Venus Over Manhattan, 'Calder Crags + Vanuatu Totems from the Collection of Wayne Heathcote', New York NY
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, 'Braque, Miró, Calder, Nelson: Varengeville, un atelier sur les falaises', Rouen, France
Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, 'Dimensionism: Modern Art in the Age of Einstein', Amherst MA (Travelling Exhibition)
Nahmad Projects, 'Calder/Miró: Clair de Lune', London, UK
Museo Picasso, 'Calder-Picasso', Málaga, Spain (Travelling Exhibition)
Musée Picasso, 'Calder – Picasso', Paris, France (Travelling Exhibition)
Fondation Beyeler, 'Alexander Calder & Fischli/Weiss', Riehen, Switzerland
Hauser & Wirth, 'Transparence: Alexander Calder/Francis Picabia', Zurich, Switzerland
Pulitzer Arts Foundation, 'Calder Lightness; Richard Tuttle Wire Pieces; Fred Sandback 64 Three–Part Pieces', St. Louis MO
Wadsworth Atheneum, 'Alexander Calder: Mobiles / Naum Gabo: Kinetic Constructions and Constructions in Space', Hartford CT
MoMA Museum of Modern Art, 'Cubism and Abstract Art', New York NY (Travelling Exhibition)
Selected Awards
The Goslar Kaiserring Award for Modern Art, City of Goslar, Goslar, Germany
United Nations Peace Medal, UN United Nations, New York NY
Citoyen d’Honneur, City of Saché, Saché, France
Official Mayoral Decree of ‘Alexander Calder Day in Chicago’ for 25 October; Honorary Citizen of Chicago, City of Chicago, Chicago IL
Le Grand Prix National des Arts, French Ministry of Culture, Paris, France
Honorary Degree, Doctor of Laws, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
Key to the City of Grand Rapids, City of Grand Rapids, Grand Rapids MI
Creative Arts Awards, Sculpture Medal, Brandeis University, Waltham MA
Gold Medal of Honor in Sculpture, Architectural League of New York, New York NY
Selected Public Collections
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago IL
Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley CA Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago IL
Museum of Modern Art, New York NY
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia PA
Leeum – Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco CA
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York NY
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY
Yale University Art Gallery, Yale University, New Haven CT
Bibliography
Selected Monographs
Rower, Alexander S. C., 'Calder Sculpture', New York: Universe, 1998, ill.
Pierre, Arnauld, 'Calder: La sculpture en mouvement', Paris: Découvertes Gallimard, 1996
Calder, Alexander, Sweeney, James Johnson, Lelong, Daniel, 'Calder, l’artiste et l’oeuvre' [Archives Maeght no. 1], Paris: Maeght Editeur, 1971, ill.
Davidson, Jean (ed.), 'Calder: An Autobiography with Pictures', New York: Pantheon Books, 1966
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