Collection: Calder Alexander

(Lawnton 1898 - New York 1976)

Alexander Calder is famous primarily for his light and revolutionary kinetic sculptures, named mobiles by Marcel Duchamp, which are contrasted by the static sculptures called stabiles. Throughout his life, always moving between France and the United States, Calder did not only dedicate himself to sculpture: he painted, created original prints, and designed tapestries, rugs, jewelry, and toys, including those inspired by the circus world, which was particularly dear to him.
In the years of his full artistic maturity, the collaboration with the Maeght gallery in Paris became one of the most fruitful chapters of his graphic production. The lithographs and engravings created in that context were never just a simple reflection of sculpture: even on paper, in fact, Calder rediscovered his universe of forms, signs and colors in motion, and treated original printmaking as an autonomous language, capable of spreading a visual thought with the same strength and joy as three-dimensional works. Not by chance, the magazine Derrière le miroir was created specifically to present his original lithographs to a wider audience.
The international recognition was broad and early: the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale in 1952, solo exhibitions at MoMA and in Paris, and a major retrospective at the Guggenheim in New York confirmed Calder's centrality in the landscape of 20th-century art.