Alexander Calder's Woman with Square Umbrella (1928) is an exceptionally rare survivor from one of the briefest and least-documented chapters of his career. Following disappointing sales of his wire portraits at the Weyhe Gallery, Calder turned—on the advice of sculptor Chaim Gross—to carved wood, acquiring blocks of tropical lumber from a Brooklyn supplier and spending much of that summer carving on a farm in Peekskill, New York. He would abandon the medium entirely in the early 1930s in favor of sheet metal, making these wood sculptures coveted works of his early output.

Carved from a single block, the figure was given directly by Calder to his New York roommate Paul Nitze—recalled in his autobiography as "a female figure, as the mate for a South Pacific wood carving," offered in gratitude for Nitze's hospitality. The work has remained in the same family ever since, its chain of ownership unbroken from that original gift to the present day. It was first exhibited publicly at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943.

Calder's approach was to let the block itself suggest the form—preserving its overall shape and character while discovering within it a single coherent figure. The broad hat, compact posture, and simplified features emerge from the wood with a sense of inevitability that he described as a "directness" that appealed to him. Authenticated by the Calder Foundation (A10700), Woman with Square Umbrella is a museum-quality work with irreplaceable provenance from a pivotal, fleeting moment in one of the twentieth century's most celebrated artistic careers.