CALDER Alexander

Exhibitions

Alexander Calder was born in Philadelphia, USA in 1898. He was the son of Alexander Stirling Calder and grandson of Alexander Milne Calder, both well-known sculptors. After obtaining his mechanical engineering degree from the Stevens Institute of Technology, Calder worked various jobs before enrolling at the Art Students League in New York City in 1923, it was here that he finished his first miniature travelling circus and began making a name for himself as an innovative abstract sculptor. Calder is known as the originator of the suspended or standing kinetic sculpture made from delicately balanced shapes and set in motion by air currents; a device Marcel Duchamp named ‘mobiles’. He was awarded the main prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennial in 1952 and first prize for sculpture in the 1954 Pittsburgh International. Calder created a series of paintings in gouache during a yearlong stay in Aix-en-Provence, France in 1953 in parallel to his sculptural practice. Painting quickly, the gouache allowed Calder to quickly translate the vocabulary of his sculpture into something more immediate, using an angular figuratism, which often served as inspiration for later sculpted works. Presenting a synthesis of geometric forms, Calder’s lines convey, with considered simplicity, the abundance and diversity of nature and the spontaneous impressions it evokes. His works are held in almost every major museum collection worldwide.