ALEXANDER CALDER | Heather James

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Alexander Calder was a key figure in the development of abstract sculpture and is renowned for his groundbreaking work in kinetic art; he is one of the most influential artists of the Twentieth Century. "Prelude to Man-Eater" is a delicately balanced standing sculpture that responds to air currents, creating a constantly changing and dynamic visual experience.
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<br>Calder's Standing Mobiles were a result of his continuous experimentation with materials, form, and balance. This Standing Mobile is a historically significant prelude to a larger work commissioned in 1945 by Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. "Prelude to Maneater" is designed to be viewed from multiple angles, encouraging viewers to walk around and interact with it.
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<br>The present work is a formal study for Man-Eater With Pennant (1945), part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The work is also represented in "Sketches for Mobiles: Prelude to Man-Eater; Starfish; Octopus", which is in the permanent collection of the Harvard Fogg Museum.
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<br>Calder's mobiles and stabiles can be found in esteemed private collections and the collections of major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Tate Gallery in London among others.

ALEXANDER CALDER

Prelude to the Man-Eater

59 x 42 x 18 in.

sheet metal, wire, paint

Alexander Calder executed a surprising number of oil paintings during the second half of the 1940s and early 1950s. By this time, the shock of his 1930 visit to Mondrian’s studio, where he was impressed not by the paintings but by the environment, had developed into an artistic language of Calder’s own. So, as Calder was painting The Cross in 1948, he was already on the cusp of international recognition and on his way to winning the XX VI Venice Biennale’s grand prize for sculpture in 1952. Working on his paintings in concert with his sculptural practice, Calder approached both mediums with the same formal language and mastery of shape and color.
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<br>Calder was deeply intrigued by the unseen forces that keep objects in motion. Taking this interest from sculpture to canvas, we see that Calder built a sense of torque within The Cross by shifting its planes and balance. Using these elements, he created implied motion suggesting that the figure is pressing forward or even descending from the skies above. The Cross’s determined momentum is further amplified by details such as the subject’s emphatically outstretched arms, the fist-like curlicue vector on the left, and the silhouetted serpentine figure.
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<br>Calder also adopts a strong thread of poetic abandon throughout The Cross’s surface. It resonates with his good friend Miró’s hieratic and distinctly personal visual language, but it is all Calder in the effective animation of this painting’s various elements. No artist has earned more poetic license than Calder, and throughout his career, the artist remained convivially flexible in his understanding of form and composition. He even welcomed the myriad interpretations of others, writing in 1951, “That others grasp what I have in mind seems unessential, at least as long as they have something else in theirs.”
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<br>Either way, it is important to remember that The Cross was painted shortly after the upheaval of the Second World War and to some appears to be a sobering reflection of the time. Most of all, The Cross proves that Alexander Calder loaded his brush first to work out ideas about form, structure, relationships in space, and most importantly, movement.

ALEXANDER CALDER

28 3/4 x 36 1/4 in.

By the 1970s, when "Cantilever" was created, Alexander Calder was at the height of artistic prowess. He created this piece with an informed eye, having been working for the better part of the century on identifying and expounding upon his unique creative vision. One of the most instantly recognizable artists of his time, Calder was referred to as an "Engineer of Beauty" by his close friend and neighbor Robert Osborn. "Cantilever" is a bold experiment in balance, form, and color in the third dimension.
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<br>The work was exhibited at the Perls Gallery, Calder's primary dealer. Since that time, the work has remained in the same private collection. It is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A08148.
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<br>It was also in 1973 that Alexander Calder completed the Monumental sculpture in Chicago, "Flamingo."

ALEXANDER CALDER

34 1/4 x 60 1/4 x 14 3/4 in.

sheet metal, wire and paint

Well known for his candor and pragmatic sensibility, Alexander Calder was as direct, ingenious, and straight to the point in life as he was in his art. “Personnages”, for example, is unabashedly dynamic, a work that recalls his early love of the action of the circus as well as his insights into human nature. The character of “Personnages” suggests a spontaneous drawing-in-space, recalling his radical wire sculptures of the 1920s.
<br>© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

29 1/2 x 43 1/4 in.

gouache and ink on paper

After disappointing sales at Weyhe Gallery in 1928, Calder turned from sculpted wire portraits and figures to the more conventional medium of wood. On the advice of sculptor Chaim Gross, he purchased small blocks of wood from Monteath, a Brooklyn supplier of tropical woods. He spent much of that summer on a Peekskill, New York farm carving. In each case, the woodblock suggested how he might preserve its overall shape and character as he subsumed those attributes in a single form. There was a directness about working in wood that appealed to him. Carved from a single block of wood, Woman with Square Umbrella is not very different from the subjects of his wire sculptures except that he supplanted the ethereal nature of using wire with a more corporeal medium.
<br>© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

Woman with Square Umbrella

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

Tornado in Space

30 1/2 x 22 1/2 in.

ALEXANDER CALDER - Colonial Organisms - gouache and ink on paper - 43 x 29 1/2 in.

ALEXANDER CALDER

Colonial Organisms

43 x 29 1/2 in.

gouache and ink on paper

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

42 1/4 x 29 5/8 in.

gouache and ink on paper

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

Three Pyramids + Blue Ball

29 1/2 x 43 1/4 in.

gouache and ink on paper

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

21 1/8 x 29 1/2 in.

gouache and ink on paper

Zigzag, Sun, and Crags, painted in 1972, recalls the early morning hour of June 9, 1922 when the young seafaring adventurer Sandy (Alexander) Calder was awakened on the deck of the H. F. Alexander by the intense beams of tropical sunlight that burst across the bow. He stood, squinting against the glare, then turned his head to the west and felt a sudden rush of sensations that brought to him a cosmic resonance he had never felt before.
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<br>“It was early one morning on a calm sea, off Guatemala, when over my couch — a coil of rope — I saw the beginning of a fiery red sunrise on one side and the moon looking like a silver coin on the other. Of the whole trip this impressed me most of all; it left me with a lasting sensation of the solar system.”
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<br>Zignag, Sun, and Crags is not a simple memento of that experience. It is an exhilarating work that celebrates Calder’s inimitable way of imparting the wonder of the natural world by amplifying our experience of it. If, as he might wish, it brings a sense of interconnectedness and belonging as it did to him along the coast of Guatemala as a young Merchant Marine, so much the better.

ALEXANDER CALDER

Zigzag Sun and Crags

29 1/2 x 43 in.

gouache and ink on paper

ALEXANDER CALDER - Red and Black Spiral - gouache and ink on paper - 29 1/2 x 43 1/4 in.

ALEXANDER CALDER

Red and Black Spiral

29 1/2 x 43 1/4 in.

gouache and ink on paper

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

Wigwam rouge et jaune

29 1/2 x 43 1/4 in.

gouache and ink on paper

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

29 1/2 x 43 1/4 in.

gouache and ink on paper

ALEXANDER CALDER - Directions - gouache and ink on paper - 29 1/2 x 43 1/4 in.

ALEXANDER CALDER

29 1/2 x 43 1/4 in.

gouache and ink on paper

ALEXANDER CALDER - Mickey Mouse - gouache and ink on paper - 30 x 43 3/8 in.

ALEXANDER CALDER

30 x 43 3/8 in.

gouache and ink on paper

ALEXANDER CALDER - Red Petals, Blue Moon - gouache and ink on paper - 29 1/2 x 43 1/4 in.

ALEXANDER CALDER

Red Petals, Blue Moon

29 1/2 x 43 1/4 in.

gouache and ink on paper

ALEXANDER CALDER - The Forest - gouache and ink on paper - 43 x 29 1/4 in.

ALEXANDER CALDER

43 x 29 1/4 in.

gouache and ink on paper

ALEXANDER CALDER - The Oval Spiral - gouache and ink on paper - 43 1/4 x 29 1/2 in.

ALEXANDER CALDER

The Oval Spiral

43 1/4 x 29 1/2 in.

gouache and ink on paper

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

30 x 43 3/8 in.

gouache and ink on paper

ALEXANDER CALDER - Tracks - gouache and ink on paper - 29 3/8 x 41 1/8 in.

ALEXANDER CALDER

29 3/8 x 41 1/8 in.

gouache and ink on paper

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

30 3/4 x 22 1/2 in.

gouache and ink on paper

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

43 3/8 x 30 in.

gouache and ink on paper

© 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

ALEXANDER CALDER

color lithograph on wove paper

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