biography of alexender

8/6/2019 Biography of Alexender

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This biography from the Archives of AskART:

One of America's best knownsculptors, "Sandy" Calderbecame most famous for hiskinetic abstract mobiles. Healso did floor pieces, was a

painter in watercolor, oil andgouache, did etchings andserigraphs, and made jewelryand tapestries as well designedtheater stage settings andarchitectural interiors.

His art reflects his reputation ofbeing a beloved, decent humanbeing who continually searchedfor fun and humor in thataround him. He was highlyindependent from luxuries andfocused on creativity. His lastwords, "I'll do it myself", tell the

story of his life.

He was born in Philadelphia, the son of Alexander Sterling Calder and the grandson of AlexanderMilne Calder, well-known sculptors of public monumental works. His mother, Nanette LedererCalder, was a professional portrait painter. Obviously he was nurtured in an environment of art,and from an early age, he was making figures from found objects. Because of the father's illhealth and the necessity for a drier climate, the family moved to Oracle, Arizona in 1905, and fiveyears later to Pasadena, California. When Sandy was a teenager, the family returned toPennsylvania.

He was unable to make a decision about a vocation, but his fascination with machines led to hisearning a degree in mechanical engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1919. Hetried a variety of jobs including working in the boiler room of a cruise ship. In 1923, he enrolled inthe Art Students League in New York City, where his teachers were John Sloan, Guy Pene Du Bois,and Boardman Robinson. In classes there he did numerous oil paintings and also humorous

drawings of sporting events for the "National Police Gazette."

In 1925, he produced an illustrated book titledAnimal Sketching, one-line drawings thatforeshadowed his early wire sculptures of figures and animals. In 1926, encouraged by anengineer friend of his father to follow his talent, he went to Paris where he lived the next sevenyears and shortly after his arrival began doing wire sculpture. During this period, his mother gavehim seventy-five dollars a month for living expenses.

He assembled a "Circus," of miniature, hand activated one-wire figures with which he gaveperformances in his studio. These pieces were made by bending and twisting a single wire intohumorous portraits, animals, and figure groups.

He also met many of the leading avant-garde artists of the day including Piet Mondrian, whoinfluenced Calder's geometric, non-objective constructions that he began producing in 1931. Hisfloor pieces, named "stabiles" by Jean Arp, were exhibited in a gallery exhibition organized by

Marcel Duchamp, who coined the word "mobile" for the hanging, kinetic pieces. Soon, Calder wascreating many of these wind-driven works.

Calder's mobiles were first shown in the United States in 1932, and the next year he returned toAmerica and purchased a home in Roxbury, Connecticut where he lived the remainder of his lifeand gained much attention from that time.

Dancer Martha Graham used several of his sculptures in her modern dance performances, andpersonnel at the Museum of Modern Art in New York began purchasing pieces from him includinghis first large-scale piece called Whale in 1937.


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During World War II when metal was scarce, he made mobiles and stabiles from carved, paintedwood, and in the early 1950s he added to his repertoire wall pieces and mobiles that incorporatedsound. Many federal agencies and businesses commissioned works by him, and most majorAmerican museums have his pieces in their collections.

His death in 1976 occurred coincidentally with a major retrospective of his work at the WhitneyMuseum of American Art in New York.

Source:Matthew Baigell, Dictionary of American Art

This biography from the Archives of AskART:

CALDER IN BLOOMA walk in the park with thegreat American sculptor.by PETER SCHJELDAHL

An interviewer once asked

Alexander Calder if he ever feltsad. "When I think I might startto," he replied, "I fall asleep."On another occasion, he spokeof the "big advantage" he hadbecause of his inclination to be"happy by nature." Calder, whodied in 1976 at the age ofseventy-eight, in fine productivefettle almost to the end, mademany such remarks, which arecertain to daunt ordinarymaladjusted citizens.

Perhaps vengefully, some

people persist in regarding himas trivial, which he isn't. His

work is often great, sometimes O.K., and once in a while fairly bad, but it always operates at ahigh level of formal and philosophical intelligence. It also wears well.

The plangent insouciance of Calder's best work looks ever stronger and, in a real way, moreserious than most other canonical styles of the twentieth century. (And the flat champagne of hisfailures comes across as a test to see if we're paying attention.)

Above all, Calder was an extraordinarily successful maker of public art in an age when the terms"public" and "art" began to consort with each other like cats in a sack. It's not quite that we lovehis costume jewelry for the world's plazas. Better, we take it in stride as self-explanatory and allbut inevitable. A Calder doesn't set off the questions that abort so much public art in ourdemocracy: What is that? What is it doing there? When will it go away?

A rangy outdoor and indoor exhibition, "Grand Intuitions: Calder's Monumental Sculpture," curatedby Alexander S. C. Rower, a grandson of the artist, has just opened at the Storm King Art Center,in Mountainville, New York; it will remain for three years.

Source:The New Yorker, June, 2001

Biography from Hollis Taggart Galleries (Artists, A-D):


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Credited with theinvention of the mobile,Alexander Calderrevolutionizedtwentieth-century artwith his innovative useof subtle air currents to

animate sculpture. Anaccomplished painter ofgouaches and sculptorin a variety of media,Calder is best known forpoetic arrangements ofboldly colored,irregularly shapedgeometric forms thatconvey a sense ofharmony and balance.

Calder was born in asuburb of Philadelphiato a family of artists.

His grandfather,Alexander Milne Calder, and father, Alexander Stirling Calder, created sculptures and publicmonuments, and his mother was a painter. Accustomed to traveling in pursuit of public artcommissions, the family moved to Pasadena, California, in 1906. The new environmentwith itsexpansive night sky studded with brilliant planets and starsfascinated the young Calder. Thesecosmic forms strongly influenced the structure and iconography of his future work.

At a young age, Calder began using tools and found materials to create various structures andinventions. This constructive impulse led him to attend the Stevens Institute of Technology,where he received a degree in mechanical engineering in 1919. Yet by 1922 he had abandonedhis new career. After a stint as a seaman, Calder began formal art study at the Art StudentsLeague in New York in 1923. During this period, Calder worked as a freelance illustrator and oftenvisited zoos and circuses to sketch.

Calder moved to Paris in 1926, and during his seven-year stay he delighted fellow artists including

Man Ray, Joan Mir, Fernand Lger, Le Corbusier and Piet Mondrian and attracted the attention ofart patrons with his whimsical wire figures and portrait heads. Most notably, he created smallsculptures of circus animals and performers with movable parts and developed and toured aperformance/demonstration dubbed the Cirque Calder. This series culminated in the completionof his most celebrated piece, Circus (1932, Whitney Museum of American Art).

Calders use of irregular, biomorphic forms that recall the work of Mir reflected the influence ofSurrealism and Dada, but it was the art and concepts of Mondrian that would have the mostdecisive impact on Calders work. Calder visited Mondrians studio in 1930 and later describedhow the experience transformed his understanding of abstract art. He wrote, This one visit gaveme a shock that started things. Though I had often heard the word modern before, I did notconsciously know or feel the term abstract. So now at thirty-two, I wanted to paint and work inthe abstract. (1) Shortly thereafter, Calder was invited to join the international Abstraction-Cration group that included Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Jean Arp,and many other artists working with geometric abstract forms.

Calder was impressed by Mondrians reduction of visual imagery to a vocabulary of flat planes ofprimary colors. He suggested that Mondrian consider adding movement to the forms. Mondrianrejected the idea, stating my painting is already very fast. (2) Calder soon took his own adviceand began experimenting with movement in his work. At first, he drew on his mechanical trainingto devise cranks and motors that would produce kinetic effects. The following year, Calderexhibited these new pieces, christened mobiles by Marcel Duchamp, as well as non-moving wireabstractions termed stabiles by Jean Arp. By 1932 Calder realized that ambient air currentswere strong enough to move lightweight sculptures, and he abandoned prescribed patterns ofmovement for more spontaneous rhythms.


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In 1933, Calder reestablished his home base in the United States, on a farm in Roxbury,Connecticut. The years from this point to the late 1950s were the most varied and prolific ofCalders career. As he emerged as an artist of international stature, with a mid-careerretrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943, Calder continued to make mobiles (hangingand standing) and stabiles made out of sheet metal, as well as paintings, jewelry, and set designsfor performances by Martha Graham, Eric Satie, and others. When scrap metal was in shortsupply during World War II, Calder turned to wood. In 1953, the Calder family purchased a home

in Sach, France, and they began dividing their time between Connecticut, France and per iods ofextended travel. By the end of the 1950s, the proportions of Calders mobiles had dramaticallyincreased and he was completing more site-specific commissions.

Large-scale sheet-metal stabiles commissioned for public spaces dominate Calders late career inthe 1960s and 1970s. Their vivid colors, sweeping arches and shapes evoking birds and animalsoffer a counterpoint to rectilinear modern architecture and breathe life into urban environmentsaround the world. One notable example is Flamingo (1973, Federal Center Plaza, Chicago).Widely celebrated during his lifetime, Calder died just a few weeks after the opening of CaldersUniverse, a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

1. Alexander Calder,An Autobiography in Pictures (New York: Pantheon Books, 1966), p. 113.2. Ibid.

References

Arnason, H. H. Calder. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1966.

Calder, Alexander.An Autobiography in Pictures. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966.

Gimnez, Carmen, and Alexander S. C. Rower, ed. Calder: Gravity and Grace. London: PhaidonPress, 2004.

Lipman, Jean. Calder's Universe. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1976.

Marter, Joan M.Alexander Calder. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Prather, Marla.Alexander Calder 18981976. Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1998.

Biography from Rogallery.com:

Alexander Calder,internationally famousby his mid-30s, isrenowned fordeveloping a new idiomin modern art-themobile.

His works in this mode,from miniature tomonumental, are calledmobiles (suspendedmoving sculptures),standing mobiles(anchored movingsculptures) and stabiles(stationaryconstructions). Calder'sabstract works arecharacteristically direct,spare, buoyant, colorfuland finely crafted. Hemade ingenious,

frequently witty, use of natural and manmade materials, including wire, sheetmetal, wood andbronze.


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Calder was born in 1898 in Philadelphia, the son of Alexander Stirling Calder and grandson ofAlexander Milne Calder, both well-known sculptors. After obtaining his mechanical engineeringdegree from the Stevens Institute of Technology, Calder worked at various jobs before enrolling atthe Art Students League in New York City in 1923. During his student years, he did line drawingsfor the National Police Gazette.

In 1925, Calder published his first book,Animal Sketches, illustrated in brush and ink. Heproduced oil paintings of city scenes, in a loose and easy style. Early in 1926, he began to carveprimitivist figures in tropical woods, which remained an important medium in his work until 1930.

In June 1936, Calder moved to Paris. He took some classes at the Academie de la GrandeChaumiere and made his first wire sculptures. Calder created a miniature circus in his studio; theanimals, clowns and tumblers were made of wire and animated by hand. Many leading artists ofthe period attended, and helped with, the performances.

Calder's first New York City exhibition was in 1928, and other exhibitions in Paris and Berlingained him international recognition as a significant artist. A visit to Piet Mondrian's studio provedpivotal. Calder began to work in an abstract style, finishing his first nonobjective construction in1931.

In early 1932, he exhibited his first moving sculpture in an exhibition organized by Marcel

Duchamp, who coined the word "mobile." In May 1932, Calder's fame was consolidated by the firstUnited States show of his mobiles. Some were motor-driven, His later wind-driven mobilesenabled the sculptural parts to move independently, as Calder said, "by nature and chance."Calder returned to the United States to live and work in Roxbury, Massachusetts in June 1932.

From the 1940s on, Calder's works, many of them large-scale outdoor sculptures, have beenplaced in virtually every major city of the Western world. In the 1950s, he created two new seriesof mobiles: "Towers," which included wall-mounted wire constructions, and "Gongs," mobiles withsound.

Calder was prolific and worked throughout his career in many art forms. He produced drawings, oilpaintings, watercolors, etchings, gouache and serigraphy. He also designed jewelry, tapestry,theatre settings and architectural interiors.

Calder died in 1976.

Biography from Denis Bloch Fine Art Ltd.:

Alexander Calder was born in Lawnton, Pennsylvania on July 22, 1898 to artist parents: his fatherwas a sculptor and his mother a painter. From the age of 8 on his parents provided him with aworkshop in which to create.

For Christmas 1909, at the age of 11, he presented his parents with two of his first sculptures, atiny dog and duck cut from a brass sheet. The duck was kineticit rocked back and forth whentapped.

While working as a fireman on a ship bound from New York to San Francisco, Calder awoke ondeck to see both a brilliant sunrise and a sparkling full moon; each was visible on oppositehorizons. The experience made a lasting impression on Calder: he would refer to it throughout hislife.

Never interested in becoming an artist, Calder graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology inHoboken, NJ with a practical degree in mechanical engineering in 1919.

In 1923 he moved to New York and enrolled at the Art Students League where he and his fellowstudents made a game of rapidly sketching people on the streets & subways. Calder becameknown for his ability to convey a sense of movement with a single unbroken line. He took a jobillustrating and was sent to sketch the Barnum & Bailey Circus--the circus would become a lifelonginterest for the artist.


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Calder moved to Paris in 1926 and befriended prominent artists and intellectuals such as JoanMiro, Fernand Leger, Marcel Duchamp and Piet Mondrian.

In 1931 Calder created his first truly kinetic sculpture and gave form to an entirely new type ofart. That year he married Louisa James, a niece of writer Henry James. Their first daughter,Sandra, was born in 1935 and a second daughter, Mary, followed in 1939.

In 1943 The Museum of Modern Art in New York gave a comprehensive exhibition of Caldersworkthe shows exhibition catalogue was the first extensive study on the artist.

By the mid 1940s Alexander Calder was given exhibitions in Berne, Rio de Janeiro, Boston,Virginia and New York sealing his international status as an artist.

Calder won the first place prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1952. Numerousinternational public commissions followed including Braniff Airlines who asked the artist to paint afew of their jet planes as flying canvases in the 1970s.

Calder, who described his mobiles as four dimensional drawings died in 1976 shortly after hisretrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

QUOTE: "I paint with shapes."

Select Museum Collections:Art Institute of Chicago, ILDetroit Institute of Arts, MIWalker Art Center, MNGuggenheim Museum, NYMuseum of Modern Art, NYNational Gallery, Washington, DCNorton Simon Museum, CAKunstmuseum Basel, SwitzerlandMuseum of Contemporary Art, BarcelonaTate Gallery, London

** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at

[email protected].

Permanent Collection: Alexander Calder's

Finny Fish


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Alexander Calder, Finny Fish. Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art.

Tonight at Politics & Prose, writer and angler Paul Greenberg will read from his new bookFour Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food. It's a book that's swum into stores at just the

right time, as people turn their minds more to the repercussions of our consumption. Farmedversus wild salmon; rising mercury levels in tuna; sustainability and ethics: there's a lot to

weigh up before we batter a bit of plaice and stick it next to some chips.

Greenberg has done something smart in his book: rather than succumb to the fisherman's

fetish of coming over all ADD and offering "a maze of all the different fish out there," he'sfocusing on four popular fish varieties. His menu reads salmon, bass, cod and tuna -- those

we see most in our market-places -- all of which are on the cusp of domestication in someway. Apart from the fact that he's adamant that some fish are strictly not suited to taming,

Greenberg's main concern isn't extinction: it's the loss of abundance in the wild.

Time it right, and you can encounter that impression of precious, jewel-like nature at theNational Gallery of Art, with this delightfulFinny Fish (1948). It's by the American artist

Alexander Calder (1898 - 1976), who worked variously as a sculptor, abstract painter and

illustrator of children's books. He was born into a fertile artistic lineage: his father and

grandfather (who both shared his name) were important sculptors, and his mother was a

portrait painter.

Calder worked originally as an engineer (he'd received a degree from Stevens Institute ofTechnology in New Jersey) and a work likeFinny Fish is essentially a marriage of his

technical-engineering and artistic minds. It's dubbed a "mobile" (a term coined by MarcelDuchamp in 1931) and Calder's "mobiles" (as well as their earth-bound counterparts the

"stabiles") revolutionized sculpture.


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Our fishy friend is a lot less abstract than Calder can get (you probably have one of his worksthat looks like an assemblage of suspended leaf and berry-like shapes swinging in your

mind), but this still gives us a whiff of the tack Calder takes. He's able to manipulate paintedsteel rod and wire into a delicate construction that's simple and yet significant.

Alexander Calder, Finny Fish. Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art.

Imagine if you will our friend, the fish, suspended from a wire and bobbing along in space.

Calder experimented with motorized mobiles in the 1930s but soon settled more and morewith the idea of natural air currents animating his works. As the fish flows free in the breeze,

all those small pieces of glass, shards of ceramics and other interesting knick-knacks tied

over his side will start to twitch and tinkle: Calder has an enchanting and lyrical sense of

play.

The artist described his mobiles as "four dimensional drawings" and I can see why: this fish

has an integral sense of flat line and strong design and yet exists so totally in the round. It's aclever tension and one that draws attention to the space it's in, sparking musings about habitat

and wildlife. Which are important thoughts for us to be having about a fish.

Aleid Ford is profiling 365 masterworks at theNational Gallery ofArtthis year for her

projectArt 2010, which appears on her website Head forArt.

Alexander Calder Artwork Details


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y Wall Color

y View to Scale

y Enlarge

Detailed Description

In 1975 the artist wasinvolvedin a major project called Flying Colours. Thiswasdesigned to be

part of the bi-centeneary celbrations of The United States. The project wasworkedwith Branfiif

Airlineswho allowed one of their Boing 727 airccraft to be one of Calders flying canvases. The

plane, N408BN was given thenickname Sneaky Snake by Braniff pilots. Therewere two reasons for

thisnickname: Calder had painted a snake onnumber 1 enginenacelle cover (thesubject of our

historic photograph) Secondly the aircraft had a trim problem inasmuch as pilots had to adjust

altitude and heading by hand.Most pilotsdidnot enjoy flying Calder 727. Thisis a very famous

moment in a very famous artists life.

Alexander Calder / MATRIX 56

November 1, 1982 - January 15, 1983

Cow, ca. 1968-69

Download the exhibition brochure (PDF).


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If we accept Baudelaire's statement that "Genius is merely childhood retrieved," Alexander Calder(1898-197) is probably America's greatest genius. He is certainly a pioneering figure in Americanmodernism. At a time when American art was largely timid and provincial, he responded to elements ofthe revolutionary art movements of Europe with a native American ingenuity. His inventiveness, hispatient tinkering with scrap materials , and his playful understanding of form gave his art a lastingfreshness.

Alexander Calder (known as Sandy) moved with his family to San Francisco in 1913, when his father,

Alexander Stirling Calder, became Chief of Sculpture of the Panama-Pacific International exposition. Onthe Berkeley campus (in Faculty Glade) A. S. Calder is represented by The Last Dryad, a gift to theUniversity from his wife and daughter.

After earning a degree in mechanical engineering in 1919, Calder studied at the Art Student's League inNew York. It was during this period that he became enamored of the circus and spent much timeobserving and sketching animals at the zoo. Calder's sister Peggy says that when they were children sheand Sandy worked out a formula for drawing birds with one uninterrupted line flowing around the entirebody. The results can be seen in drawings like the comically ferocious Lions in the Ring (1932), one ofthe Works in MATRIX 56. Calder's many pen and ink drawings were inspired by the animal doodles hecreated in wire, his favorite medium. (Calder once told Peggy, "I think best in wire.") One continuouswire "line" travels from the snout to the ears, udders, legs and squiggly tail of Calder's Sow of 1928. Aseries of bobbing sheet metal circles on wire stems creates the plumage in the Crested Crow, 1972.

In 1926 Calder went to Paris, where he continued making animals in wood and wire, and decided tocreate a complete circus, "...just for the fun of it." At first it was a two-suitcase circus, but by 1931 he

had added so many new performers (55 people and animals altogether) that five suitcases wererequired to transport it. The Circus is now in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Throughhis performances of the Circus, Calder met many of the giants of the Paris art world-Piet Mondrian, JoanMir?, Man Ray, Jules Pascin, Fernand L?ger, and Jean Arp. Calder's new friends had been liberated fromtradition by the constant waves of new ideas that circulated in the Paris art world of the twenties. Dada,Surrealism, and Cnstructivism all provided Calder with an atmosphere conducive to the development ofopen-form sculpture and the free play of imagination.

A visit to Mondrian's Paris studio in 1930 precipitated Calder's entry into the field of abstract art. WhenCalder saw Mondrian's red, yellow, and blue cardboard rectangles tacked on the studio walls, hesuggested that "It would be fun to make those rectangles oscillate." (Mondrian did not agree.) From

Mondrian he absorbed the essentials of Neo-plasticism: flat planes, the use of primary colors inopposition to black and white, and asymmetrical composition. Then he translated these formal elementsinto a personal idiom, using industrial materials. Among the series of wood and wire constructions hemade at this time was a motorized, abstract sculpture for which Marcel Duchamp coiined the word"mobile." When Calder made his first large-scale stationary sculpture in 1935, Jean Arp came up with anappropriate term, "stabile."

"Animobile," a portmanteau word combining "animaux" and "mobile," was invented by the artist's wifeLouisa for a series of metal sculptures Calder made in 1971. The animobiles vary in size from the tinyRat in this exhibition to huge beasts, but they are all endowed with Calder's humorous, irreverent andgentle good nature. Calder once said that his fan mail was tremendous-but all the writers were undersix.

Calder continued to show a partiality for animal sculpture throughout his life. In the mid-twenties Caldermade prototypes for an American toy company that are similar to the dachshund and blue velvet cow inthe MATRIX exhibition. In later years he turned beer and coffee cans into birds (The Only Only Bird, ca.1950) and continued to make wire animal sculpture (Mule and Cart, 1968-69). Even his greatestabstractions refer to natural forms.

The current MATRIX exhibition is occasioned by the loan of Calder's famous painting, Circus Scene,

painted in oil on burlap in 1926 and sent to the Hayses as a tenth anniversary present. It is one ofseveral circus scenes Calder painted at that time. "I love the feeling of space under the Big Top," hesaid.

Norma SchlesingerGuest Curator

MATRIX is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Federal Agency.

Alexander Calder Biography


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Delightful Calder Toys and Sculptures at the Whitney


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Onview at theWhitney Museum of Art from now until February 15, 2009 is a delightful exhibit of

toys,sculptures and toy-likesculptures by Alexander Calder (1898-1976). Theexhibit covers Calder's

early yearsin Paris,when hewas first learning to transition away from painting to become asculptor. Like a child playing with new materials,in those years hedid loosewiresketches andink

drawingswith a remarkable freedom ofexperimentation. They are a joy to see.


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Above: Calder in Parisin 1930 (Image: Calder Foundation)

It is little-known that in hisearly years Calder made a living working as a toy designer for the Gould

Toy Company of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The monthly fees hewas paidenabled him to independently

pursue his career as a fine artist.

The Whitney'sexhibit also containsseveral playful films created by Calder,inwhich his creations are

put into motion by the artist himself. Thisin particular makes theshow a wonderful place to bring

children, asin many of the films Calder lays on the floor like an overgrown child, literally playing with

the toys hedesigned.


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Childrenwill love marching around theshowidentifying all the animals. Thereis anenthralling circus

installation Calder madewith wire,wood and painted fabric andits accompanying film. Aswell as

being entertaining for kids, thiswork is considered critical in the history of Modern Art for including

motion as anintegral part of the artwork for the first time.


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And because thisisArt and Hunger, this post wouldnot be completeifwedidn't recommend a

wonderful Italian cafe right down thestreet where you cansip anespresso after theexhibition.

Sant'Ambroeusis one of the most authentic, genuineItalian cafesin the city. The lovely,vintage-

inspired logo design andeven theinterior decor mimicsevery detail ofwhat real cafesinItaly are

like. You can grab a panini or a brioche to get your spirits back up for more art-viewing.


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Reduce

Alexander Calder(American, 18981976)

Aluminum Leaves, Red Post, 1941

Sheet metal, wire, and paint

61 x 61 in. (1,549 x 1,549 mm)

The Lipman Family Foundation, Inc.

Estate of Alexander Calder/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photograph: Jerry L. Thompson, New York

Alexander Calder

From Wikipedia, the freeencyclopedia

Jump to:navigation,search

Alexander Calder


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Alexander Calder, by Carl VanVechten, 1947

Birth name Alexander Calder

BornJuly 22, 1898

Lawnton, Pennsylvania

DiedNovember 11, 1976 (aged 78)

New York, NY

Nationality United States

Field Sculpture

TrainingStevensInstitute of Technology,Art Students

League of New York

Awards Presidential Medal of Freedom[1]

Alexander Calder (July 22, 1898 November 11, 1976) was an Americansculptorand artist

most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture,

Alexander Calder also createdpaintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry,jewelry and household

objects.


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Contents

[hide]

y 1Childhood

y 2Education

y 3Art career

y 4Calder's paintings

y 5Commemoration

y 6Quotes

y 7Gallery

y 8Selectedworks

y 9References

y 10Bibliography

y 11External links

Childhood

Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton, Pennsylvania, on July 22, 1898. His father,Alexander Stirling Calder, was a well-known sculptor who created many public installations,

a majority of them in Philadelphia. Calders grandfather, sculptorAlexander Milne Calder,was born in Scotland and immigrated to Philadelphia in 1868. He is best-known for the

colossal statue ofWilliam Penn on top of Philadelphia's City Hall tower. Calders mother,Nanette Lederer Calder, was a professional portrait painter who studied at the Acadmie

Julian and the Sorbonne in Paris from around 1888 until 1893. She then moved toPhiladelphia where she met Alexander Stirling Calder while studying at the Pennsylvania

Academy of the Fine Arts. Calders parents were married on 22 February 1895. His sister,

Margaret "Peggy" Calder, was born in 1896. Her married name was Margaret Calder Hayes,

and she was instrumental in the development of the UC Berkeley Art Museum.

[2]

In 1902, Calder posed nude for his fathers sculpture The Man Cub, which is now located in

the Metropolitan Museum of Art inNew York City. That year, he completed his earliest

sculpture, a clay elephant.[3]

Three years later, Stirling Calder contracted tuberculosis and Calders parents moved to a

ranch in Oracle, Arizona, leaving the children in the care of family friends for a year.[4]

The

children were reunited with their parents in late March 1906 and stayed at the ranch in

Arizona until fall of the same year.[5]

After Arizona, the Calder family moved to Pasadena, California. The windowed cellar of the

family home became Calder's first studio and he received his first set of tools. He used scrapsof copper wire that he found in the streets to make jewelry and beads for his sisters dolls. On

January 1, 1907, Calders mother took him to the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena,

where he observed a four-horse-chariot race. This style of event later became the finale of

Calders wire circus shows.[6]

In 1909, when Calder was in the fourth grade, he sculpted a dog and a duck out of sheet brass

as Christmas gifts for his parents. The sculptures were three dimensional and the duck was


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kinetic because it rocked when gently tapped. These sculptures are frequently cited as earlyexamples of Calders skill.[7]

In 1910, the Calder family moved back to Philadelphia, where Alexander briefly attended the

Germantown Academy, and then to Croton-on-Hudson in New York State.[8]

In Croton,

during his early high school years, Calder was befriended by painter Everett Shinn with

whom he built a gravity powered system of mechanical trains. Calder described We ran thetrain on wooden rails held by spikes; a chunk of iron racing down the incline speeded the

cars. We even lit up some cars with candle lights.[9]

After Croton, the Calders moved to Spuyten Duyvil to be closer to the Tenth Street Studio

Building in New York City, where Stirling Calder rented a studio. While living in Spuyten

Duyvil, Calder attended Yonkers High.

In 1912, Stirling Calder was appointed acting chief of the Department of Sculpture of the

Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.[10]

He began work on sculpturesfor the exposition that was held in 1915. During Alexander Calders high school years

between 1912 and 1915, the Calder family moved back and forth between New York and

California. In each new location Calders parents reserved cellar space as a studio for theirson. Toward the end of this period, Calder stayed with friends in California while his parents

moved back to New York so that he could graduate from Lowell High School in San

Francisco. Calder graduated in the class of 1915.

Education

In 1915, Calder decided to study mechanical engineering and enrolled at the Stevens Institute

of Technology in Hoboken,New Jersey. He was a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternityand excelled in mathematics. In the summer of 1916, Calder spent five weeks training at the

Plattsburg Civilian Military Training Camp. In 1918, he joined the Students Army Training

Corps, Naval Section, at Stevens and was made guide of the battalion.

I learned to talk out of the side of my mouth and have never been quite able to correct it

since.[11]

Calder received a degree from Stevens in 1919. For the next several years, he held a

variety of engineering jobs, including working as a hydraulics engineer and a

draughtsman for the New York Edison Company. In June 1922, Calder found work as a

mechanic on the passenger shipH. F.Alexander. While the ship sailed from San

Francisco toNew York City, Calder worked on deck off the Guatemalan Coast andwitnessed both the sun rising and the moon setting on opposite horizons. He described in

his autobiography "It was early one morning on a calm sea, offGuatemala, when over my

couch a coil of rope I saw the beginning of a fiery red sunrise on one side and themoon looking like a silver coin on the other."

[12]

TheH.F.Alexanderdocked in San Francisco and Calder traveled up to Aberdeen,Washington, where his sister lived with her husband, Kenneth Hayes. Calder took a job

as a timekeeper at a logging camp. The mountain scenery inspired him to write home to

request paints and brushes. Shortly after this, Calder decided to move back to New York

to pursue a career as an artist.


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27/30

Un

!

ed" 1968, Centro Cultural deBelm, Lisbon, Portugal

The Ci e C l er can be seen as the start ofCal er's interestin both wire scul ture and

kinetic art He maintained a sharp eye with respectto the engineering balance ofthe

sculptures and utili ed these to develop the kinetic sculptures Duchamp would ultimatelydub as "mobiles" a French pun meaning both "mobile" and "motive." He designed some

ofthe characters in the circus to perform suspended from a thread. However, it was themi ture of his experiments to develop purely abstract sculpture following his visit with

Mondrianthatlead to his firsttruly kinetic sculptures, manipulated by means of cranksand pulleys.

By the end of 1931, he moved on to more delicate sculptures which derived their motion

from the air currents in the room. From this, Calder's "mobiles" were born. Atthe sametime, Calder was also experimenting with self-supporting, static, abstract sculptures,

dubbed "stabiles" by Arpin 1932 to differentiate them from mobiles. Calder and Louisareturned to America in 1933 to settle in a farmhouse they purchased inRoxbury,

Connecticut, where they raised a family (first daughter, Sandra born 1935, second

daughter, Mary, in 1939). Calder continued to give Cirque Calder performances but also

worked with Martha Graham, designing stage sets for her ballets and created a moving

stage construction to accompanyEric Satie's Socrat# in 1936.

During World War II, Calder attempted tojoin the Marines as a camofleur, but wasrejected. Instead, he continued to sculpt, but a scarcity of metalled to him producing

workin carved wood.

Calder's first retrospective was held in 1938 at George Walter Vincent Smith Gallery in

Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1943, the Museum ofModern Art hosted a well-receivedCalder retrospective, curated byJames Johnson Sweeney and Marcel Duchamp.

Calder was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the3rd Sculpture International held atthe Philadelphia Museum of Artin the summer of 1949. His mobile,I$ t# rnational

%

obil#

was the centerpiece ofthe exhibition.


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Man, a sculptureby Ale&

ander Calder for Expo 67, on Saint Helen's ' slandParc Jean-Drapeau,

Montral, Quebec

In the 1950s, Calderincreasingly concentrated his efforts on producing monumentalsculptures. Notable examples are ".125" forJFK Airportin 1957, "La Spirale" for

UNESCOin Paris 1958 and "Man" ("L'Homme"), commissioned forExpo 67in

Montreal. Calder's largest sculpture untilthattime, 20.5 meters high, was "El SolRojo",

constructed forthe 1968 SummerOlympicsin Mexico City.

In 1962, he settled into his new workshop Carroi, a very futuristic design and overlooking

the valley ofthe LowerChevrire to Sach in Indre-et-Loire (France). He did not hesitate

to offer his gouaches and small mobile to his friends in the country, he even donated to

the town of a stabile trnant since 1974 in front ofthe church: an anti-sculpture free fromgravity.

He did make the most ofits stabiles and mobiles at factory Bimont Tours (France),

including "the Man", all stainless steel 24 meters tall, commissioned by Canada'sInternational Nickel (Inco) forthe Exposition Universelle de Montralin 1967. All

products are made from a model made by Calder, by the research department (headed byM. Porcheron, with Alain Roy, Franois Lopez, Michel Juigner ...) to design to scale,

then by workers qualified boilermakers for manufacturing, Calder overseeing alloperations, and if necessary amending the work. All stabiles will be manufactured in

carbon steel, then painted for a major partin black, exceptthe man who will be rawstainless steel , the mobiles are made of aluminum and made of duralumin.

He made most of his monumental sculpture during this time at Etablissements Bimontin

Tours, France. Calder would create a model ofthe work, the research department would

scale itto final size, then experienced boilermakers would complete the actual metalwork

all underCalder's watchful eye. Stabiles were made in carbon steel; mobiles were

mostly aluminum.

In 1966, Calder published hisAutobiography withPictures with the help of his son-in-law, Jean Davidson. In June 1969, Calder attended the dedication of his monumental


29/30

stabile La Grande Vitesse in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This sculpture is notable forbeing the first public work of artin the United States to be funded with federal monies;

acquired with funds granted from the then newNational Endowment forthe Arts underits Art for Public Places program.

Calder created a sculpture called WTCStabile (also known asBentPropeller), which in

1971 was installed atthe entrance oftheWorld Trade Center's North Tower. WhenBattery ParkCity opened, the sculpture was moved to Vesey and Church Streets.[14] It

stood in front of7 World Trade Centerwhen it was destroyed onSeptember 11, 2001.[15]

Calder died on November 11, 1976, shortly after opening a major retrospective show atthe Whitney Museumin New York. He had been working on a third plane, entitled Salute

to Mexico, when he died.

Cald(

r')

pai0

1

i0

2 )

In addition to sculptures, Calder painted throughout his career, beginning in the early

1920s. By 1973, Braniff International Airways commissioned him to paint a full-size DC-8-62 as a "flying canvas." In 1975, Calder completed a second plane, this time a Boeing

727-291, as a tribute to the U.S. Bicentennial. In 1975, he was commissioned by BMWto

paint a BMW 3.0 CSL which would come to be the first vehicle in the BMW ArtCar

Project.

Commemoration

Calder room at National Gallery of Art in Washington, D3C.

Two months after his death, Calder was posthumously awarded thePresidentialMedal of

Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, by PresidentGerald Ford. However,


30/30

representatives ofthe Calder family boycotted the January 10, 1977 ceremony "to make astatement favoring amnesty forVietnam Wardraft resisters".

In 1987, the Calder Foundation was founded by Calder's family. The Foundation "runs its

own programs, collaborates on exhibitions and publications, and gives advice on matterssuch as the history, assembly, and restoration of works by Calder."[16] The U.S. copyright

representative forthe Calder Foundation is theArtists Rights Society.[17]Calder's workisin many permanent collections across the world.

Quotes

Thissection is 4 c 4 ndid 4 t 5 to be copiedto Wikiquote usin6

the Trans7

iki process.

"How can art be realized?

Out of volumes, motion, spaces bounded by the great space, the universe.

Out of different masses, tight, heavy, middlingindicated by variations of size or

colordirectionallinevectors which represent speeds, velocities, accelerations, forces,

etc. . . .these directions making between them meaningful angles, and senses, together

defining one big conclusion or many.

Spaces, volumes, suggested by the smallest means in contrastto their mass, or even

including them,juxtaposed, pierced by vectors, crossed by speeds.

Nothing at all ofthis is fixed.

Each element able to move, to stir, to oscillate, to come and go in its relationships with

the other elements in its universe.

It must not bejust a fleeting moment but a physical bond between the varying events in

life.

Not extractions,

But abstractions

Abstractions that are like nothing in life exceptin their manner of reacting."[18]

-From Abstraction-Cration, Art Non Figuratif, no. 1, 1932.

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