Object Type Medium Support Style Artist Creation Date Choose one Architecture Assemblage Cartoon drawing Collage Construction Drawing Drawing and limited edition print Drawing, textile Exhibition Site Installation Montage Painting Painting (relief) Photograph Photograph and audio Photograph and drawing Photograph, collage Portfolio for photographs Print Print Print (altered) Print on canvas Print with drawing Print with hand-coloring Print with hand-painting Print with objects Print, collage Print, drawing Print, photograph Prints Sculpture Sculpture (multiple) Textile Video Wall relief

Alexander Calder

• Medium:Sculpture
• Life Dates:

  (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1898 - 1976, New York, New York)

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Descended from two generations of sculptors and a mother who was a painter, Alexander Calder was born in Lawnton, Pennsylvania, in 1898. He studied mechanical engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey, graduating in 1919 with a Master's of Engineering. He then worked at jobs ranging from draftsman to logger to fireman on a freighter. In 1922, he took night school lessons in drawing and in 1923, joined the Art Students League where he came into contact with painters of the so-called Ashcan School. He took a job as an illustrator for the National Police Gazette, for which he covered circus performances. In 1926, Calder moved to Paris, where he began to explore sculpture as well as non-commercial drawing. His miniature circus performers attracted the attention of artists as disparate as Joan Miró and Piet Mondrian. In 1930-31, he was adding motors and movement to his wire sculptures, works dubbed "mobiles" by Marcel Duchamp. By the following year, most of his mobiles were set in motion by air currents alone. Artist Jean Arp dubbed his non-moving sculptures were dubbed "stabiles." Calder created his Mercury Fountain, a moving work involving a stream of mercury striking a metal plate, for the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1937. By 1943, he received a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. From that time, he was widely and regularly exhibited and collected, around the world. His works increased in scale gradually, becoming monumental by the 1950s to 1960s. Posthumously executed and installed, his largest mobile is his untitled work commissioned in 1972 for the central court of the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In 1977, also posthumously, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award granted by the United States. Calder designed most of his works in his studio near Tours, France, his primary residence. He also kept a studio and house in Roxbury Connecticut. He died in November of 1976, shortly after a retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Photo by Calvin Campbell.