Alexander Calder
Mobile, 1963
Painted sheet metal and rod, 108 × 324 × 147 inches (274.3 × 823 × 373.4 cm)
David Smith
Oval Node, 1963
Painted steel, 96 × 85 × 18 inches (243.8 × 215.9 × 45.7 cm)
David Smith
Untitled, 1959
Spray paint and ink on canvas, 101 × 48 ½ inches (256.5 × 123.2 cm)
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition featuring monumental works by David Smith and Alexander Calder. These masters of painted steel sculpture achieved international recognition in their lifetime for having created an idiomatic American vision to what had previously been thought of as the exclusive purview of European Modernism.
After pursuing abstraction and figuration throughout their careers, David Smith and Alexander Calder increased the scale of their works to a monumental level in the late 1950s. As they each explored this new scale, they continued to challenge the stress between positive and negative space. In "Mobile," 1963 Calder used heavy, industrial steel to create a delicate object that floats gracefully in space. In "Oval Node," 1963, and "Gondola II," 1964, Smith plays between the density of steel and the lyricism of abstraction. It is remarkable that two sculptors from the same generation, both working in painted steel, created such distinct works.
Although rarely exhibited together, it is noteworthy that in 1962, about the same time the works on view were created, Calder and Smith were included in the Spoleto Festival, The Festival of Two Worlds. In 1993, the Guggenheim Museum featured each artist, as well as Picasso, González and Giacometti in the landmark exhibition Picasso and the Age of Iron.
A major retrospective of David Smith's work, organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, will open in January of 2006. This exhibition will travel to the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and the Tate Modern, London.
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.
