Alexander Calder (1898-1976) American, Galerie Maeght Calder Exhibition Poster. Featuring Calder's illustration, "Triangles and Spirals." Abstract geometric in three colors. Stamped "Jun 27 1991" on back.

Size: 31 1/2 x 19 in. 

#2549 . 

Alexander “Sandy” Calder was born in 1898 in Lawnton, Pennsylvania. His mother was Jewish and his father was Calvinist, but Calder never practiced any religion. Calder’s grandfather was the sculptor Alexander Milne Calder, best known for the colossal statue of William Penn on Philadelphia City Hall’s tower. His father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was also a well-known sculptor, and his mother was a professional portrait artist who had studied at the Académie Julian and the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1902 he completed his earliest sculpture, a clay elephant. In 1905 his father contracted tuberculosis, and for the next ten years the family moved all around the country for work and his father’s health, particularly in California, Pennsylvania, and New York. When Calder graduated high school in 1915, he had already experimented with multiple mediums and attended nearly half a dozen schools. His parents didn’t want him to be an artist, so he enrolled at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey to study mechanical engineering. In 1918 he joined the Student’s Army Training Corps and was made guide of the battalion. Upon receiving his degree in 1919 he immediately went to work as a draftsman for the New York Edison Company, followed by a job as a mechanic on the passenger ship H.F. Alexander in 1922. When the ship docked in San Francisco he traveled to Aberdeen, Washington, working as a timekeeper in a logging camp. The scenery rekindled his interest in visual art, and he returned to New York to enroll in the Art Students League in 1925. His sketches for the National Police Gazette included images of the traveling Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which led to a lifetime fascination with the Big Top. In 1926 Calder moved to Paris, enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and established a studio in the Montparnasse Quarter. He began to create his Cirque Calder, a miniature circus fashioned from wire, cloth, string, rubber, cork, and other found objects. Designed to be transportable (it grew to fill five large suitcases), the circus was presented on both sides of the Atlantic. He is credited with inventing wire sculpture, or “drawing in space,” as well as producing some of the earliest kinetic sculptures of the Abstract movement. In 1929, while traveling by boat from Paris to New York, Calder met Louisa James (1905-1996), the grandniece of author Henry James, and married her two years later. While in Paris Calder befriended a number of avant-garde artists, and held his first exhibition of abstract constructions at the Galerie Percier in 1931. Calder and Louisa returned to America in 1933 to Roxbury, Connecticut, where they had two daughters. During World War II Calder attempted to join the Marines as a camoufleur but was rejected. Throughout the 1950s he became internationally recognized for his wind-powered mobiles and monumental installations, as well as championing and idolizing French art, culture, and style. His work for theatrical productions and his knack for printmaking were also highly appreciated, expanding substantially in this period. In 1963, Calder settled into a new workshop overlooking the valley of the Lower Chevrière to Saché in Indre-et-Loire, France. His later works included designs for a Douglas DC-8 airplane and a BMW 3.0 CSL car, as well as thousands of pieces of jewelry that demonstrated a fascination with African art, mostly made from brass and steel. Calder died unexpectedly in November 1976 of a heart attack, shortly after the opening of a major retrospective show at the Whitney Museum in New York. His work can still be seen in permanent collections across the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.