Alexander Calder
Installation view
Photo © Douglas M. Parker Studio
Alexander Calder
Installation view
Photo © Douglas M. Parker Studio
Alexander Calder
Installation view
Photo © Douglas M. Parker Studio
Alexander Calder
Installation view
Photo © Douglas M. Parker Studio
Alexander Calder
Untitled, 1949
Painted sheet metal, wire and rod, 42 × 90 × 30 inches (106.7 × 228.6 × 76.3 cm)
Alexander Calder
Fish, 1952
Hanging mobile of painted steel rod, wire, string, colored glass and metal objects, 15 ½ × 45 ½ inches (39.4 × 115.6 cm)
Alexander Calder
Ritou I, 1946
Painted sheet metal and wire, height: 32 inches (81.3 cm), span: 31 inches (78.7 cm)
© Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Douglas M. Parker Studio
Alexander Calder
Yellow Disk, 1953
Standing mobile: painted steel with mobile and stable elements, Mobile height: 114 inches (290 cm); Mobile span: 112 inches (285 cm); Base: 46 × 38 inches (117 × 96.5 cm)"
"A mobile is an abstract sculpture made chiefly out of sheet metal, steel rods, wire, and wood. Some or all of these elements move, propelled by electric motors, wind, water or by hand…When everything goes right a mobile is a piece of poetry that dances with the joy of life and surprise."
-Alexander Calder
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present a seminal range of hanging and standing mobile sculptures by Alexander Calder. The exhibition will span the second chapter of the artist's career and his fascination with sculpture in motion.
The works on view will include important examples of standing and hanging mobiles, inspired by man and nature alike, sight and sound, reality and fantasy. Flocons de neige (1970) representing a quiet snow flurry, or Blue Crescent and Gong (1953) making reference to primitive man-made musical instruments; or perhaps there is no meaning at all as Jean-Paul Sartre suggested, "They have too many possibilities and are too complex for the human mind, even their creator's, to predict their combinations. Calder established a general destiny of motion for each mobile, then he leaves it on its own." ("Existentialist on Mobilist", ARTnews, Dec 1947)
In addition to the standing and hanging mobiles, a Crag piece, Crag with red heart (1974) and Calder's Fish (1952), will also be on view. The exhibition presents a variety of Calder's mobile formulas, each piece composed of an eclectic range of materials such as sheet metal, rods, wire and wood, pieces of glass and porcelain, string and other found objects.
Whether seen up close or at a distance, Alexander Calder's art seems to possess both a touch of magic and witchcraft, never precisely still, never exactly the same.
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.
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.
Jed Perl takes a look at Alexander Calder’s lifelong fascination with dance and its relationship to his reimagining of sculpture.
The Summer 2020 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Joan Jonas’s Mirror Piece 1 (1969) on its cover.
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.
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.
The Spring 2018 Gagosian Quarterly with a cover by Ed Ruscha is now available for order.
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.
