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Alexander Calder

Alexander Calder, Occident, 1975 Gouache and ink on paper, 29 × 43 inches (73.6 × 109.2 cm)© 2014 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Alexander Calder, Occident, 1975

Gouache and ink on paper, 29 × 43 inches (73.6 × 109.2 cm)
© 2014 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Alexander Calder, Untitled (maquette), 1972 Sheet metal and paint, 34 ¼ × 29 15/16 × 26 inches (87 × 76 × 66 cm)© 2013 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Right Society (ARS), New York

Alexander Calder, Untitled (maquette), 1972

Sheet metal and paint, 34 ¼ × 29 15/16 × 26 inches (87 × 76 × 66 cm)
© 2013 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Right Society (ARS), New York

Alexander Calder, Ritou I, 1946 Hanging mobile: painted sheet metal, wire and rod, Height: 32 inches (81.3 cm); Span: 31 inches (78.7 cm)© 2013 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Right Society (ARS), New York

Alexander Calder, Ritou I, 1946

Hanging mobile: painted sheet metal, wire and rod, Height: 32 inches (81.3 cm); Span: 31 inches (78.7 cm)
© 2013 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Right Society (ARS), New York

About

Alexander Calder's invention of the mobile (a term that Marcel Duchamp coined to describe these new kinetic sculptures) resonated with early Conceptual and Constructivist art as well as the language of early abstract painting. Flat, abstract shapes made in steel, boldly painted in a restricted primary palette, black or white, hang in perfect balance from wires. While the latent energy and dynamism of the mobiles remained of primary interest to Calder throughout his life, he also created important standing sculptures, which Jean Arp named “stabiles” to distinguish them from their ethereal kinetic counterparts. These works reject the weight and solidity of sculptural mass, yet displace space in a three–dimensional manner while remaining linear, open, planar, and suggestive of motion.

Alexander Calder was born in 1898 in, Lawnton, Pennsylvania, and died in 1976 in New York. He received his B.S. in 1919 from Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken. From 1923 to 1925, Calder attended the Art Students League, New York, and in 1926, he attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris. Calder's public commissions are on view in cities all over the world and his work has been the subject of numerous museum exhibitions, including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (1998, traveled to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California); The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (1998–99); Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford (2000); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2000); Iwaki City Art Museum, Japan (2000, traveled to The Museum of Modern Art, Japan; Hokkaido Obihiro Museum of Art, Japan; The Museum of Art, Japan; Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum, Japan; Nagoya City Art Museum, Japan); Storm King Art Center, New York (2001–03); Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2003, traveled to Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, through 2004); Foundation Beyeler, Switzerland (2004, traveled to Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., through 2005); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California (2013); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2014); Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2014); Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2015); and Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Saint Louis (2015).

Alexander Calder, Flying Dragon, 1975, installation view, Place Vendôme, Paris © 2021 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Thomas Lannes

Behind the Art
Alexander Calder: Flying Dragon

In this video, Gagosian director Serena Cattaneo Adorno celebrates the installation of Alexander Calder’s monumental sculpture Flying Dragon (1975) at Place Vendôme in Paris, detailing the process and importance of this ambitious project.

Alexander Calder poster for McGovern, 1972, lithograph

The Art History of Presidential Campaign Posters

Against the backdrop of the 2020 US presidential election, historian Hal Wert takes us through the artistic and political evolution of American campaign posters, from their origin in 1844 to the present. In an interview with Quarterly editor Gillian Jakab, Wert highlights an array of landmark posters and the artists who made them.

Black-and-white photograph of Alexander Calder and Margaret French dancing on a cobblestone street while Louisa Calder plays the accordion in front of a large window outside of James Thrall Soby’s house, Farmington, Connecticut, 1936

An Alphabetical Guide to Calder and Dance

Jed Perl takes a look at Alexander Calder’s lifelong fascination with dance and its relationship to his reimagining of sculpture.

Featuring Joan Jonas’s Mirror Piece 1 (1969) on its cover.

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2020

The Summer 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Joan Jonas’s Mirror Piece 1 (1969) on its cover.

Charlotte Perriand in her studio on place Saint-Sulpice, Paris, 1928. The hands holding a plate halolike behind her head are Le Corbusier’s.

The New World of Charlotte Perriand

Inspired by a visit to the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s exhibition Charlotte Perriand: Inventing a New World, William Middleton explores the life of this modernist pioneer and her impact on the worlds of design, art, and architecture.

Calder: Sculpting A Life

Calder: Sculpting A Life

The first authorized biography of Alexander Calder was published this past fall. Biographer Jed Perl and Alexander “Sandy” S. C. Rower, president of the Calder Foundation, discuss the genesis of the book, the nature of genius, and preview what’s to come in the second volume with the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier.

Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2018

Gagosian Quarterly Spring 2018

The Spring 2018 Gagosian Quarterly with a cover by Ed Ruscha is now available for order.

Alexander Calder: Gouaches

Alexander Calder: Gouaches

While Alexander Calder is regarded as the originator of mobile art works, his works on paper exhibit a mastery of two-dimensional abstraction. With a show of his gouaches closing in the Davies Street, London gallery, Derek Blasberg celebrates some of the artist’s pieces that didn’t require a welding helmet.

Fairs, Events & Announcements

Gagosian’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach 2022. Artwork, left to right: © Gerhard Richter; © Amoako Boafo; © Richard Prince; © 2022 Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation; © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Stanley Whitney. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

Art Fair

Art Basel Miami Beach 2022

December 1–3, 2022, booth D5
Miami Beach Convention Center
artbasel.com

Gagosian is pleased to present a selection of modern and contemporary works at Art Basel Miami Beach 2022. Returning to Miami for the fair’s twentieth anniversary, the gallery is honored to have participated each year the fair has been held.

Gagosian’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach 2022. Artwork, left to right: © Gerhard Richter; © Amoako Boafo; © Richard Prince; © 2022 Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation; © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Stanley Whitney. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

Alexander Calder, Flying Dragon, 1975, installation view, Place Vendôme, Paris © 2021 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Thomas Lannes

Public Installation

Calder
Flying Dragon, 1975

October 19, 2021–March 20, 2022
Place Vendôme, Paris

Alexander Calder’s monumental sculpture Flying Dragon (1975) will be on view at Place Vendôme in Paris beginning October 19. The installation marks the opening of Gagosian’s new gallery at rue de Castiglione and is part of FIAC Hors les Murs, which presents artworks in emblematic public spaces throughout the city.

Flying Dragon (1975)—which exemplifies Calder’s capacity to invest a powerful visual dynamism in his work regardless of scale—is among the last of the monumental works he made. While static, the striking sculpture transforms when viewed from different angles. Constructed from sheet metal, it is physically weighty but appears delicate due to its limited points of contact with the ground.

Alexander Calder, Flying Dragon, 1975, installation view, Place Vendôme, Paris © 2021 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Thomas Lannes

The exterior of Gagosian’s new gallery at 9 rue de Castiglione, Paris. Photo: Thomas Lannes

Gagosian Announces New Paris Gallery

Gagosian is pleased to announce the opening of a new location in Paris in October 2021. Situated at 9 rue de Castiglione, in the 1st arrondissement, the space is part of the historic Hotel Lotti development, built in 1910. The location is steps from Place Vendôme, where Leo Castelli and René Drouin opened the storied Drouin Gallery in 1939, and within walking distance of the Musée du Louvre, Musée de l’Orangerie, and Musée d’Orsay.

The exterior of Gagosian’s new gallery at 9 rue de Castiglione, Paris. Photo: Thomas Lannes

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Museum Exhibitions

Rick Lowe, Fire #4: This Time Athens, 2023, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC © Rick Lowe Studio

Opening this Week

Revolutions
Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960

March 22, 2024–April 20, 2025
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
hirshhorn.si.edu

Revolutions is a major survey of 270 artworks by 126 artists from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s permanent collection. Celebrating the museum’s fiftieth anniversary, the exhibition aims to capture the shifting cultural landscapes of a century defined by new currents in science and philosophy and ever-increasing mechanization. Shown alongside these historic works are contributions from nineteen contemporary artists whose practices demonstrate how many revolutionary ideas from a hundred years ago remain critical today. Work by Francis Bacon, Amoako Boafo, Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning, Helen FrankenthalerRick LoweSally Mann, Man Ray, Henry MoorePablo PicassoNathaniel Mary Quinn, and Cy Twombly is included.

Rick Lowe, Fire #4: This Time Athens, 2023, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC © Rick Lowe Studio

Helen Frankenthaler, Overture, 1992 © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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The Inner Island

April 28–November 4, 2023
Fondation Carmignac, Porquerolles, France
www.fondationcarmignac.com

This exhibition, which features more than eighty works by fifty artists, presents visitors with new, unknown worlds floating outside familiar geographies and temporalities. The artists included break away from reality, bringing to life fictional, mental, and abstract islands. Work by Harold Ancart, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, Simon Hantaï, Roy Lichtenstein, Albert Oehlen, and Christopher Wool is included.

Helen Frankenthaler, Overture, 1992 © 2023 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Sally Mann, The Bath, 1989 © Sally Mann

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Monochrome Multitudes

September 22, 2022–January 8, 2023
Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago
smartmuseum.uchicago.edu

Revisiting classic modernist ideas about flatness, idealized form, and colors, this exhibition opens up the seemingly reductive format of the monochrome to reveal its global resonance and creative possibilities while working toward a more expansive narrative of twentieth and twenty-first century art. Work by Alexander Calder, Walter De Maria, Helen Frankenthaler, Theaster Gates, Frank Gehry, Sally Mann, and Richard Serra is included.

Sally Mann, The Bath, 1989 © Sally Mann

Installation view, Motion. Autos, Art, Architecture, Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain, April 8–September 18, 2022. Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: courtesy Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

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Motion
Autos, Art, Architecture

April 8–September 18, 2022
Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain
www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus

Motion. Autos, Art, Architecture celebrates the artistic dimension of the automobile and links it to the parallel worlds of painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, and film. The exhibition brings together nearly forty automobiles that are placed center stage in the galleries and surrounded by significant works of art and architecture. Work by Alexander Calder, Christo, Andreas Gursky,  Ed Ruscha, and Andy Warhol is included.

Installation view, Motion. Autos, Art, Architecture, Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain, April 8–September 18, 2022. Artwork © Ed Ruscha. Photo: courtesy Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

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