Today’s artist and inspiration is the American Modernist Alexander Calder .
Alexander Calder Life & Carrier :
Known simply as “Sandy” Calder was an American sculptor from Pennsylvania . He is recognized both for his in mobile sculptures driven by motors or air fluxes, and static monumental public sculptures. Calder’s legacy also includes paintings, jewelry, theatre sets and costumes.
Alexander Calder was born into a family of artists .Ironically his parents did not want him to be an artist, so he chose to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering .In 1919 Calder received a degree from the Stevens Institute of Technology New Jersey. Later on ,he decided to pursue a career as an artist in New York.
In 1926, Calder moved to Paris, enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and established a studio at 22 rue Daguerre in the Montparnasse Quarter.
Alexander Calder Works:
Calder was an artist who believed that art should be joyous, playful, but also powerful. When living in Paris in the 1920s he was famous for making moving toys that starred in the ‘home circus’ performances held in his own flat. ‘He was never without a roll of wire and a pair of pliers in his pocket’ says one of the talking heads in the accompanying documentary film, before explaining how Calder would go to parties with them and sculpt wire portraits of people on the spot.
Cirque Calder, 1926–31
Whitney Museum
In 1931 “Galerie Percier” hosted a performance of for Calder which ultimately gave him a world-renowned artist status. The performance was attended by nearly the entire Parisian art scene, including Le Corbusier, Man Ray, Jean Cocteau,and Picasso, among others.
What do the critics say?
Jean-Paul Sartre on Calder’s mobiles: “The forces at work are too numerous and complicated for any human mind, even that of their creator, to be able to foresee all their combinations. For each of them Calder establishes a general fated course of movement, then abandons them to it: time, sun, heat and wind will determine each particular dance.”
“One cannot describe his works- one must see them” said separately by Bruno E. Werner, ‘Portraits, Sculpture, Wire Forms,’ Nierendorf Galerie, Deutsche, Allgemeine Zeitung, April 1929 and by E. Szittya, ‘Alexander Calder’, Kunstblatt, June 1929.
“There is an element of the piper of Hamelin’s tune in the purring and jigging of a roomful of his “mobiles” that calls the child out of us in spite of ourselves… In a roomful of Calder’s we are conscious of a definite heightening of vitality…” (James Johnson Sweeney, ‘Alexander Calder’s Mobiles’, from Mobiles by Alexander Calder. exh. cat. (Chicago: The Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago, 1935)
