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Alexander Calder   (American, 1898-1976) 

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Artworks for sale (145)   View All   

Alexander Calder, Les Pyramides Grandes
Alexander Calder
Les Pyramides Grandes
1975

Edward T. Pollack
Alexander Calder, Lot 2026: Evolution
Alexander Calder
Lot 2026: Evolution
DuMouchelles Fine Arts Auctioneers and Estate Appraisal
Alexander Calder, Red, white and Blue Sun
Alexander Calder
Red, white and Blue Sun
1975

Auction: Jul 25, 2009
Est-Ouest Auctions Co., Ltd.
lot detail | entire auction
Alexander Calder, Untitled:Composition with Star and Butterfly
Alexander Calder
Untitled:Composition with Star and Butterfly
1962

Ann Kendall Richards, Inc.
Alexander Calder, Lot 122: Untitled (Horse and Riders)
Alexander Calder
Lot 122: Untitled (Horse and Riders)
1975

Stair Galleries
Alexander Calder, Double Dated
Alexander Calder
Double Dated
1974

Manuel Barbie

Past auction results (6083)  View All
Alexander Calder, Untitled
Alexander Calder
Untitled, 1968
sold: Nov 11, 2003
lot detail
Alexander Calder, Flying dragon
Alexander Calder
Flying dragon, 1975
sold: May 10, 2006
lot detail
Alexander Calder, Baby flat top
Alexander Calder
Baby flat top, 1946
sold: Nov 10, 2004
lot detail
1898   Born July 22nd in Pennsylvania to a mother who is a painter, and a father who is a sculptor
1909   Parents provide Calder with a workshop at age eleven where he begins to make brass animal sculptures
1919   Graduates from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey; works as engineer at logging camp in Washington state; Pacific Northwest mountain landscapes inspire his painting
1923   Moves to New York City and attends Art Students League; studies under George Luks, Thomas Hart Benton, John Sloan, and Guy Pene du Bois; works as illustrator for newspapers and advertisers
1925   Makes illustrations of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus for the National Police Gazette; employed at Central Park Zoo and Bronx Zoo; makes series of brush drawings of animals; constructs his first wire sculpture
1926   Attends Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris
1926   Meets Stanley William Hayter, exhibits at the Salon des Indépendants
1930   Visit to Mondrian’s studio results in Calder adopting complete abstraction; returns to United States to marry Louisa James
1931   Calders settle in Paris; Duchamp visits Calder’s studio and calls his moving sculptures “mobiles”; Calder meets Picasso
1933   Spends summer in Paris, meets Salvador Dali; returns to the States and buys house in Roxbury, Connecticut; undertakes large renovation of house and adds adjoining studio
1934   Constructs first outdoor sculpture; the first of several solo exhibitions at Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York
1937   Makes first sculpture enlarged from a maquette; commissioned to create an installation for the Spanish Pavillion of the World’s Fair in Paris; summers in Varengeville, France; house guests include Joan Miro, Georges Braque, Ben Nicholson, and Barbara Hepworth
1939   Commissioned to make mobile installed in main stairwell of Museum of Modern Art, New York
1949   Constructs largest mobile to date, hung over main stairwell of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
1952   Participates in Venice Biennale and awarded grand prize for sculpture
1957 - 1958   Receives several commissions for large-scale public sculpture, including a mobile for JFK Airport commissioned by Port Authority of New York and a stabile for UNESCO Paris headquarters
1967 - 1968   Sculpture commissions for Expo ’67 in Montreal and 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City
1976   Dies November 11th
  Registered in the Alexander Calder Foundation with the reference A19069
  Alexander Calder, internationally famous by his mid-30s, is renowned for developing a new idiom in modern art-the mobile.

His works in this mode, from miniature to monumental, are called mobiles (suspended moving sculptures), standing mobiles (anchored moving sculptures) and stabiles (stationary constructions). Calder's abstract works are characteristically direct, spare, buoyant, colorful and finely crafted. He made ingenious, frequently witty, use of natural and manmade materials, including wire, sheetmetal, wood and bronze.

Calder was born in 1898 in Philadelphia, the son of Alexander Stirling Calder and grandson of Alexander Milne Calder, both well-known sculptors. After obtaining his mechanical engineering degree from the Stevens Institute of Technology, Calder worked at various jobs before enrolling at the Art Students League in New York City in 1923. During his student years, he did line drawings for the National Police Gazette.

In June 1936, Calder moved to Paris. He took some classes at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and made his first wire sculptures. Calder created a miniature circus in his studio; the animals, clowns and tumblers were made of wire and animated by hand. Many leading artists of the period attended, and helped with, the performances.

Calder's first New York City exhibition was in 1928, and other exhibitions in Paris and Berlin gained him international recognition as a significant artist. A visit to Piet Mondrian's studio proved pivotal. Calder began to work in an abstract style, finishing his first nonobjective construction in 1931.

In early 1932, he exhibited his first moving sculpture in an exhibition organized by Marcel Duchamp, who coined the word "mobile." In May 1932, Calder's fame was consolidated by the first United States show of his mobiles. Some were motor-driven, His later wind-driven mobiles enabled the sculptural parts to move independently, as Calder said, "by nature and chance." Calder returned to the United States to live and work in Roxbury, Massachusetts in June 1932.

From the 1940s on, Calder's works, many of them large-scale outdoor sculptures, have been placed in virtually every major city of the Western world. In the 1950s, he created two new series of mobiles: "Towers," which included wall-mounted wire constructions, and "Gongs," mobiles with sound.

Calder was prolific and worked throughout his career in many art forms. He produced drawings, oil paintings, watercolors, etchings, gouache and serigraphy. He also designed jewelry, tapestry, theatre settings and architectural interiors. Calder died in 1976.

2008   Alexander Calder: Gouaches, Ricco Maresca Gallery, New York City, NY
2008   Alexander Calder Jewlery, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL
2007   Focus: Alexander Calder, MoMA - Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY
2006   The Surreal Calder, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art - SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN.
2006   Paco Imperial, Rio de Janeiro. Calder in Brazil. 21 November 2006-11 February 2007.
2006   Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. I Think Best in Wire: Alexander Calder. 29 June-10 September 2006.
2006   PaceWildenstein, New York. Calder Gouaches: 1942-1976. 22 September-21 October 2006.
2006   PaceWildenstein, New York. Calder: From Model to Monument. 3 February-4 March 2006.
2005   Gagosian Gallery, New York. Alexander Calder: Two Monumental Sculptures. 4 June-29 July 2005.
2005   Alexander Calder, Samuel Vanhoegaerden Gallery, Knokke-Heist
2004 - 2005   Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Calder - Miro. 9 October 2004-23 January 2005. (group)
2004   Alexander Calder, Kukje Gallery, Seoul
2003 - 2004   Museo Nacional - Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain. Calder: Gravedad y la Gracia. 27 November 2003-18 February 2004.
2003   Fundacion del Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain. Calder: Gravedad y la Gracia. 18 March-12 October 2003.
2003   Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills. Alexander Calder. 3 May-21 June 2003.
2002   PaceWildenstein, New York. Calder '76: The Cutouts. 14 February-16 March 2002.
2002   Nagoya City Art Museum, Nagoya, Japan. Alexander Calder: Motion and Color. 20 February-7 April 2002.
2002   Calder: Four Maquettes, Two Stabiles and a Little Bird Too, Ameringer Fine Arts, New York, September - October 2002
2001   Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Japan. Alexander Calder: Motion and Color. 6 April-13 May 2001. Toured to 5 cities in Japan.
2000 - 2001   Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Alexander Calder in Focus. 13 December 2000-19 August 2001.
2000   PaceWildenstein, New York. Earthly Forms: The Biomorphic Sculpture of Arp, Calder and Noguchi. 18 February-20 March 2000. (group)
1999   Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. An Adventurous Spirit: Calder at The Phillips Collection. 23 January-18 July 1999.
1999   Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Alexander Calder. 4 April 1998-28 March 1999.
1998   National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and SF MoMA, Alexander Calder: 1898-1976. 29 March-12 July 1998.
1998   San Jose Museum of Art, California. Flying Colors: The Innovation and Artistry of Alexander Calder. 16 November 1997-1 February 1998.
1996   Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Alexander Calder: 1898-1976. 10 July-6 October 1996.
1996   The Baltimore Museum of Art. Celebrating Calder. 4 October 1995-7 January 1996.
1994   Bibliotheque Municipale and Abbaye Saint-Germain, Auxerre, France. Calder. 27 May 1994.
1993 - 1994   Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Calder Gallery Installation. January 1993-May 1994.
1993   Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Alexander Calder from the Collection of the Ruth and Leonard J. Horwich Family. 21 November 1992-31 January 1993.
1992   Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Celebrating Calder. 13 November 1991-2 January 1992.
1992   Royal Academy of Arts, London. Alexander Calder. 13 March-7 June 1992.
1989 - 1990   Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, New York, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN. The Intimate World of Alexander Calder. 17 October 1989-11 March 1990.
1987 - 1988   Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Alexander Calder: Sculptures of the Nineteen Thirties. 14 November 1987-17 January 1988.
1984   Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela. (Calder). May-June 1984.
1883 - 1984   Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Des Stabiles et des Mobiles de Calder. 26 October 1983-2 January 1984.
1982   Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City. Tapices de Alexander Calder. 20 July-29 August 1982.
1981   Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Alexander Calder: A Concentration of Works from the Permanent Collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art. 17 February-3 May 1981.
1978   Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Images de Calder. 17 February-27 March 1978.
1978   San Jose Museum of Art, California. Portland Art Museum, Oregon. Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona. Calder's Universe. .
1977   American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York. Alexander Calder Memorial. 14 November-30 December 1977.
1977   Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota. High Art Musuem, Atlanta, Georgia. Calder's Universe.
1976   Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia. (Calder). October 1976.
1976   Retrospective at Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
1963 - 1964   Calder gouache show at Perls Gallery, New York; retrospective at Guggenheim Museum, New York
1962   Retrospective at Tate Gallery, London
1956   Solo show with new dealer, Klaus Perls
1950   solo shows include: Galerie Maeght, Paris, and retrospective at Masachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
1943   Retrospective at Museum of Modern Art; solo show at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts
1932   solo exhibition at Julien Levy Gallery, New York
1929   Galerie Billiet gives Calder's first solo show in Paris
1928   First show of wire animals and caricature portraits held at Weyhe Gallery, New York
1926   First painting exhibition at the Artist's Gallery, New York
   Calder: Four Maquettes, Two Stabiles and a Little Bird Too (exh. cat.), Ameringer Fine Arts, New York, 2002, p. 8, il.

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