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72-1251: The long list of the artists represented by ARS includes such names as Alexander Calder , Jasper Johns , Pablo Picasso , Henri Matisse , Georges Braque , Joseph Beuys , Pierre Bonnard , Constantin Brâncuși , Marc Chagall , Ching Ho Cheng , Henry Darger , Jean Dubuffet , Marcel Duchamp , Max Ernst , Alberto Giacometti , Wassily Kandinsky , Paul Klee , Le Corbusier , Fernand Léger , René Magritte , Joan Miró , Edvard Munch , Man Ray , Andy Warhol , Richard Bernstein (artist) , Salvador Dalí , Mark Rothko , Jackson Pollock , Georgia O'Keeffe , Tony Rosenthal also known as Bernard Rosenthal , Will Barnet , Knox Martin , Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo , among many others. In addition to estates, ARS represents many living artists, including Damien Hirst , Judy Chicago , Jenny Holzer , Richard Serra , Hans Haacke , Jim Dine , Robert Irwin , Brice Marden , Dorothea Rockburne , Mark Tobey , and Bruce Nauman , among others. In 2002 and 2006, ARS asked Google to remove customised versions of its logo put up to commemorate artists Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró, alleging that portions of specific artworks under their protection had been used in

144-577: A new workshop , overlooking the valley of the Lower Chevrière to the village of Saché in Indre-et-Loire (France). He donated to the town a sculpture , which since 1974 has been situated in the town square. Throughout his artistic career, Calder named many of his works in French, regardless of where they were destined for eventual display. In 1966, Calder published his Autobiography with Pictures with

216-562: A 1.8-acre, indoor-outdoor center dedicated to Calder's work is set to open on Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Parkway by late 2024. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Calder's works were not highly sought after, and when they sold, it was often for relatively little money. A copy of a Pierre Matisse sales ledger in the foundation's files shows that only a few pieces in the 1941 show found buyers, one of whom, Solomon R. Guggenheim , paid only $ 233.34 (equivalent to $ 4,834 in 2023) for

288-420: A balance scale. By the sequential attachment of additional objects, the final creation consists of many balanced parts joined by lengths of wire whose individual elements are capable of moving independently or as a whole when prompted by air movement or direct contact. Thus, "mobile" has become a more well-defined term with its origin in the many such hanging constructs Calder produced in a prolific manner between

360-656: A career as an artist. In New York City, Calder enrolled at the Art Students League , studying briefly with George Luks , Boardman Robinson , and John Sloan . While a student, he worked for the National Police Gazette where, in 1925, one of his assignments was sketching the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus . Calder became fascinated with the circus action, a theme that would reappear in his later work. In 1926, Calder moved to Paris, enrolled in

432-407: A choreography due to their rhythmic movement. In addition to sculptures, Calder painted throughout his career, beginning in the early 1920s. He picked up his study of printmaking in 1925, and continued to produce illustrations for books and journals. His projects from this period include pen-and-ink line drawings of animals for a 1931 publication of Aesop 's fables. As Calder's sculpture moved into

504-626: A dozen theatrical productions, including Nucléa , Horizon , and most notably, Martha Graham 's Panorama (1935), a production of the Erik Satie symphonic drama Socrate (1936), and later, Works in Progress (1968). Works in Progress was a "ballet" conceived by Calder himself and produced at the Rome Opera House , featuring an array of mobiles, stabiles, and large painted backdrops. Calder would describe some of his stage sets as dancers performing

576-459: A federal judge ruled that for Rio Nero the burden of proof had not been fulfilled. Despite the decision, the owners of the mobile could not sell it because the recognized expert, Klaus Perls , had declared it a copy. The judge recognized the problem at the time, noting that Perls' pronouncement would make Rio Nero unsellable. In 1994, the Calder Foundation declined to include the mobile in

648-423: A model of his work, the engineering department would scale it up under Calder's direction, and technicians would complete the actual metalwork — all under Calder's watchful eye. Stabiles were made in steel plate, then painted. An exception was Trois disques , in stainless steel at 24 metres (79 ft) tall, commissioned by International Nickel Company of Canada . In 1958, Calder asked Jean Prouvé to construct

720-725: A preface for the catalogue of Calder's first exhibition of abstract constructions held at the Galerie Percier in 1931. Calder and Louisa returned to America in 1933 to a farmhouse they purchased in Roxbury, Connecticut , where they raised a family (Sandra born 1935, Mary born 1939). During World War II , Calder attempted to join the Marines as a camoufleur (see List of camoufleurs ), but was rejected. In 1955 he and Louisa traveled through India for three months, where Calder produced nine sculptures as well as some jewelry. In 1963, Calder settled into

792-757: A proposed U.S. orphan works law. In July 2008, ARS worked with the Illustrator's Partnership of America (IPA) and the Advertising Photographers of America (APA) to submit to congress a document titled, "Suggested Amendments to H.R. 5889: Orphan Works Act of 2008." The document outlined 12 amendments which the ARS, IPA and APA believe will decrease the potential negative impact of the Orphan Works Act and discourage "wide-scale infringements of visual art while depriving creators of protections currently available under

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864-598: A shape or line if necessary. In the 1950s, Calder concentrated more on producing monumental sculptures (his agrandissements period), and public commissions increasingly came his way in the 1960s. Notable examples are .125 (1957) for JFK Airport in New York, Spirale (1958) for UNESCO in Paris, and Trois disques , commissioned for Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Calder's largest sculpture, at 25.7 metres (84 ft) high,

936-434: A small group of works from around this period with a hanging base-plate, for example Lily of Force (1945), Baby Flat Top (1946), and Red is Dominant (1947). He also made works such as Seven Horizontal Discs (1946), which, like Lily of Force (1945) and Baby Flat Top (1946), he was able to dismantle and send by mail for his upcoming show at Galerie Louis Carré in Paris, despite the stringent size restrictions imposed by

1008-551: A total price of $ 100,000. Two years later, Braniff asked Calder to design a flagship for their fleet celebrating the U.S. Bicentennial. That piece, a Boeing 727-291 jet N408BN called the Flying Colors of the United States , and nicknamed the 'Sneaky Snake' by its pilots (based on quirky flight tendencies), featured a rippled image of red, white and blue echoing a waving American flag. A third design, to be dubbed Salute to Mexico ,

1080-584: A view of works by three generations of Alexander Calders. From the second floor window on the east side of the Great Stair Hall (on the opposite side from the armor collection) there is behind the viewer Calder's own Ghost mobile, ahead on the street is the Swann Memorial Fountain by his father, A. Stirling Calder , and beyond that the statue of William Penn atop City Hall by Calder's grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder . Calder Gardens ,

1152-490: A work. The Museum of Modern Art had bought its first Calder in 1934 for $ 60, after talking Calder down from $ 100. And yet by 1948 Calder nearly sold out an entire solo show in Rio de Janeiro, becoming the first internationally renowned sculptor. Galerie Maeght in Paris became Calder's exclusive Parisian dealer in 1950 and for the rest of Calder's life. After his New York dealer Curt Valentin died unexpectedly in 1954, Calder selected

1224-540: Is one of the best natured fellows there is." In the summer of 1916, Calder spent five weeks training at the Plattsburgh Civilian Military Training Camp . In 1918, he joined the Student's Army Training Corps, Naval Section, at Stevens and was made guide of the battalion. Calder received a degree from Stevens in 1919. He held a variety of jobs including hydraulic engineer and draughtsman for

1296-627: The Académie de la Grande Chaumière , and established a studio at 22 rue Daguerre in the Montparnasse Quarter . In June 1929, while traveling by boat from Paris to New York, Calder met his future wife, Louisa James (1905–1996), a daughter of Edward Holton James and grandniece of author Henry James and philosopher William James . They married in 1931. While in Paris, Calder befriended a number of avant-garde artists, including Joan Miró , Fernand Léger , Jean Arp , and Marcel Duchamp . Leger wrote

1368-632: The Copyright Act ." ARS has joined over 60 other art licensing businesses (including the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists , Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and the Stock Artists Alliance , among others) in opposing both The Orphan Works Act of 2008 and The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008. Alexander Calder Alexander "Sandy" Calder ( / ˈ k ɔː l d ər / ; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976)

1440-581: The New York Edison Company . In June 1922, Calder took a mechanic position on the passenger ship H. F. Alexander . While sailing from San Francisco to New York City, Calder slept on deck and awoke one early morning off the Guatemalan Coast and witnessed both the sun rising and the full moon setting on opposite horizons. He described in his autobiography, "It was early one morning on a calm sea, off Guatemala, when over my couch—a coil of rope—I saw

1512-459: The Perls Galleries in New York as his new American dealer, and this alliance lasted until Calder's death. In 2010, his metal mobile Untitled (Autumn Leaves) , sold at Sotheby's New York for $ 3.7 million. Another mobile brought $ 6.35 million at Christie's later that year. Also at Christie's, a standing mobile called Lily of Force (1945), which was expected to sell for $ 8 to $ 12 million,

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1584-566: The Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, where he observed a four-horse-chariot race. This style of event later became the finale of Calder's miniature circus performances. In late 1909 the family returned to Philadelphia, where Calder briefly attended Germantown Academy , then they moved to Croton-on-Hudson, New York . That Christmas, he sculpted a dog and a duck out of sheet brass as gifts for his parents. The sculptures are three-dimensional and

1656-403: The catalogue raisonné on the artist. Mobile (sculpture) A mobile ( UK : / ˈ m oʊ b aɪ l / , US : / ˈ m oʊ b iː l / ) is a type of kinetic sculpture constructed to take advantage of the principle of equilibrium. It consists of a number of rods, from which weighted objects or further rods hang. The objects hanging from the rods balance each other, so that

1728-425: The 1930s and his death in 1976. Calder's work is the only one defined by the term "mobile"; however, three other notable artists worked on a similar concept. Man Ray experimented with this idea around 1920, Armando Reverón who during the 30s made a series of movable skeletons and Bruno Munari created his "Useless Machines" in 1933, made in cardboard and playful colors. Also Julio Le Parc , Grand Prize winner at

1800-602: The Arts . In 1971, Calder created his Bent Propeller which was installed at the entrance of the World Trade Center 's North Tower in New York City. When Battery Park City opened, the sculpture was moved to Vesey and Church Streets. The sculpture stood in front of 7 World Trade Center until it was destroyed on September 11, 2001 . In 1973, the 63-foot tall (19 m) vermillion-colored public art sculpture Four Arches

1872-551: The Calder Foundation is now focusing on organizing global exhibitions for the artist. One of Calder's grandsons, Alexander S. C. "Sandy" Rower, is the president of the foundation and other family members are on the board of trustees. The Calder Foundation does not authenticate artworks; rather, owners can submit their works for registration in the Foundation's archive and for examination. The committee that performs examinations includes experts, scholars, museum curators, and members of

1944-575: The Calder family. The Calder Foundation's website provides details on the current policies and guidelines governing examination procedures. In 1993, the owners of Rio Nero (1959), a sheet-metal and steel-wire mobile ostensibly by Calder, went to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia charging that it was not by Alexander Calder, as claimed by its seller. That same year,

2016-701: The Calders moved to Spuyten Duyvil to be closer to New York City, where Stirling Calder rented a studio. While living in Spuyten Duyvil, Calder attended high school in nearby Yonkers . In 1912, Calder's father was appointed acting chief of the Department of Sculpture of the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, California, and began work on sculptures for the exposition that

2088-682: The Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France (1969), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1974). In addition, both of Calder's dealers, Galerie Maeght in Paris and the Perls Galleries in New York, averaged about one Calder show each per year. Calder's work is in many permanent collections across the world. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, has the largest body of work by Alexander Calder. Other museum collections include

2160-519: The Museum of Modern Art, and was one of three Americans to be included in Alfred H. Barr Jr. 's 1936 exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art . Calder's first retrospective was held in 1938 at George Walter Vincent Smith Gallery in Springfield, Massachusetts . In 1943, the Museum of Modern Art hosted a Calder retrospective, curated by James Johnson Sweeney and Marcel Duchamp ; the show had to be extended due to

2232-815: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía , Madrid; the Seattle Art Museum ; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. There are two pieces on display in the Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany, NY. The Philadelphia Museum of Art offers

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2304-458: The Spanish pavilion included Calder's sculpture Mercury Fountain . During World War II , Calder continued to sculpt, adapting to a scarcity of aluminum during the war by returning to carved wood in a new open form of sculpture called "constellations". Postwar, Calder began to cut shapes from sheet metal into evocative forms and hand-paint them in his characteristically bold hues. Calder created

2376-410: The age of eight for his sister's dolls using copper wire that he found in the street. For his lifelong friend Joan Miró , Calder set a shard of a broken porcelain vessel in a brass ring. Peggy Guggenheim received enormous silver mobile earrings and later commissioned a hammered silver headboard that shimmered with dangling fish. In 1942, Guggenheim wore one Calder earring and one by Yves Tanguy to

2448-517: The art and archives of Alexander Calder and [is] charged with an unmatched collection of his works". The foundation has large holdings, with some works owned by family members and others by foundation supporters. The art includes more than 600 sculptures including mobiles, stabiles, standing mobiles, and wire sculptures, and 22 monumental outdoor works, as well as thousands of oil paintings, works on paper, toys, pieces of jewelry, and domestic objects. After having worked mainly on cataloging Calder's works,

2520-552: The artist was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom , the United States' highest civilian honor, by President Gerald Ford . However, representatives of the Calder family boycotted the January 10, 1977, ceremony "to make a statement favoring amnesty for Vietnam War draft resisters ". In 1987, the Calder Foundation was established by Calder's family, "dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, preserving, and interpreting

2592-611: The artist's wire sculpture. The painter Jules Pascin , a friend from the cafes of Montparnasse , wrote the preface to the catalog. A visit to Piet Mondrian 's studio in 1930, where he was impressed by the environment-as-installation, "shocked" him into fully embracing abstract art , toward which he had already been tending. It was the mixture of his experiments to develop purely abstract sculpture following his visit with Mondrian that led to his first truly kinetic sculptures, actuated by motors, that would become his signature artworks. Calder's kinetic sculptures are regarded as being among

2664-457: The beginning of a fiery red sunrise on one side and the moon looking like a silver coin on the other." The H.F. Alexander docked in San Francisco and Calder traveled to Aberdeen, Washington , where his sister and her husband, Kenneth Hayes resided. Calder took a job as a timekeeper at a logging camp. The mountain scenery inspired him to write home to request paints and brushes. Shortly after this, Calder decided to move back to New York to pursue

2736-562: The children in the care of family friends for a year. The children were reunited with their parents in March 1906 and stayed at the Arizona ranch during that summer. The Calder family moved from Arizona to Pasadena, California . The windowed cellar of the family home became Calder's first studio and he received his first set of tools. He used scraps of copper wire to make jewelry for his sister's dolls. On January 1, 1907, Nanette Calder took her son to

2808-627: The circus was presented on both sides of the Atlantic. Soon, his Cirque Calder (on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art at present) became popular with the Parisian avant-garde. He also invented wire sculpture , or "drawing in space", and in 1929 had his first solo show of these sculptures in Paris at Galerie Billiet. Hi! , in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art , is an early example of

2880-665: The class of 1915. Alexander Calder's parents did not want him to be an artist, so he decided to study mechanical engineering. An intuitive engineer since childhood, Calder did not even know what mechanical engineering was. "I was not very sure what this term meant, but I thought I'd better adopt it," he later wrote. He enrolled at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey , in 1915. When asked why he decided to study mechanical engineering instead of art Calder said, "I wanted to be an engineer because some guy I rather liked

2952-423: The duck is kinetic because it rocks when gently tapped. In Croton, during his high school years, Calder was befriended by his father's painter friend Everett Shinn with whom he built a gravity-powered system of mechanical trains. Calder described it, "We ran the train on wooden rails held by spikes; a chunk of iron racing down the incline speeded the cars. We even lit up some cars with candle lights". After Croton,

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3024-420: The earliest manifestations of an art that consciously departed from the traditional notion of the art work as a static object and integrated the ideas of gesture and immateriality as aesthetic factors. Dating from 1931, Calder's abstract sculptures of discrete movable parts powered by motors were christened "mobiles" by Marcel Duchamp , a French pun meaning both "motion" and "motive". However, Calder found that

3096-429: The first step in the production of a monumental sculpture, was considered by Calder a sculpture in its own right. Larger works used the classic enlargement techniques of traditional sculptors, including his father and grandfather. Drawing his designs on craft paper, he enlarged them using a grid. His large-scale works were created according to his exact specifications, while also allowing him the liberty to adjust or correct

3168-537: The help of his son-in-law, Jean Davidson. Calder died unexpectedly in November 1976 of a heart attack , shortly after the opening of a major retrospective show at the Whitney Museum in New York. In Paris in 1926, Calder began to create his Cirque Calder , a miniature circus fashioned from wire, cloth, string, rubber, cork, and other found objects. Designed to be transportable (it grew to fill five large suitcases),

3240-624: The logos, and that they were used without permission. According to Theodore Feder, president of ARS, "there are underlying copyrights to the works of Miró, and they are putting it up without having the rights." Google complied with the request, but denied that there was any violation of copyright. Since 2008, ARS and Google have worked together to produce customized versions of Google's logo to commemorate ARS member artists, Marc Chagall (2008), René Magritte (2008) and Jackson Pollock (2009). In June 2008, ARS president Theodore Feder, with artist Frank Stella , wrote an Op-Ed for The Art Newspaper decrying

3312-731: The mobile also marked an abandonment of Modernism's larger goal of a rapprochement with science and engineering, and with unfortunate long-term implications for contemporary art. In 1934, Calder made his first outdoor works in his Roxbury, Connecticut studio, using the same techniques and materials as his smaller works. Exhibited outside, Calder's initial standing mobiles moved elegantly in the breeze, bobbing and swirling in natural, spontaneous rhythms. The first few outdoor works were too delicate for strong winds, which forced Calder to rethink his fabrication process. By 1936 he changed his working methods and began to create smaller-scale maquettes that he then enlarged to monumental size. The small maquette,

3384-423: The motorized works sometimes became monotonous in their prescribed movements. His solution, arrived at by 1932, was hanging sculptures that derived their motion from touch or air currents. The earliest of these were made of wire, found objects, and wood, a material that Calder used since the 1920s. The hanging mobiles were followed in 1934 by outdoor standing mobiles in industrial materials, which were set in motion by

3456-400: The music for the short film Works of Calder that focused on Calder's mobiles. Frank Zappa stated that his compositions employ a principle of balance similar to Calder mobiles. The meaning of the term "mobile" as applied to sculpture has evolved since it was first suggested by Marcel Duchamp in 1931 to describe the early, mechanized creations of Alexander Calder . At this point, "mobile"

3528-479: The number of visitors. Calder was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the 3rd Sculpture International held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. His mobile, International Mobile was the centerpiece of the exhibition. Calder also participated in documentas I (1955), II (1959), III (1964). Major retrospectives of his work were held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1964),

3600-455: The open air. The wind mobiles featured abstract shapes delicately balanced on pivoting rods that moved with the slightest current of air, allowing for a natural shifting play of forms and spatial relationships. Calder was also experimenting with self-supporting, static, abstract sculptures, dubbed "stabiles" by Jean Arp in 1932 to differentiate them from mobiles. At Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (1937),

3672-459: The opening of her New York gallery, The Art of This Century , to demonstrate her equal loyalty to Surrealist and abstract art, examples of which she displayed in separate galleries. Others who were presented with Calder's pieces were the artist's close friend, Georgia O'Keeffe ; Teeny Duchamp , wife of Marcel Duchamp ; Jeanne Rucar, wife of the filmmaker Luis Buñuel ; and Bella Rosenfeld , wife of Marc Chagall . Calder's first solo exhibition

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3744-435: The postal service at the time. His 1946 show at Carré, which was organized by Duchamp, was composed mainly of hanging and standing mobiles, and it made a huge impact, as did the essay for the catalogue by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre . In 1951, Calder devised a new kind of sculpture, related structurally to his constellations. These "towers", affixed to the wall with a nail, consist of wire struts and beams that jut from

3816-703: The realm of pure abstraction in the early 1930s, so did his prints. The thin lines used to define figures in the earlier prints and drawings began delineating groups of geometric shapes, often in motion. Calder also used prints for advocacy, as in poster prints from 1967 and 1969 protesting the Vietnam War . As Calder's professional reputation expanded in the late 1940s and 1950s, so did his production of prints. Masses of lithographs based on his gouache paintings were marketed, and deluxe editions of plays, poems, and short stories illustrated with fine art prints by Calder became available. One of Calder's more unusual undertakings

3888-570: The rods remain more or less horizontal. Each rod hangs from only one string, which gives it the freedom to rotate about the string. An ensemble of these balanced parts hang freely in space, by design without coming into contact with each other. Mobiles are popular in the nursery , where they hang over cribs to give infants entertainment and visual stimulation . Mobiles have inspired many composers , including Morton Feldman and Earle Brown who were inspired by Alexander Calder 's mobiles to create mobile-like indeterminate pieces. John Cage wrote

3960-670: The steel base of Spirale in France, a monumental mobile for the UNESCO site in Paris, while the top was fabricated in Connecticut. In June 1969, Calder attended the dedication of his monumental "stabile" sculpture La Grande Vitesse in Grand Rapids, Michigan . This sculpture is notable for being the first civic sculpture in the United States to receive funding from the National Endowment for

4032-635: The unveiling of the sculptures. Originally meant to be constructed in 1977 for the Hart Senate Office Building, Mountains and Clouds was not built until 1985 due to government budget cuts. The massive sheet-metal project, weighing 35 tons, spans the nine-story height of the building's atrium in Washington, D.C. Calder designed the maquette for the United States Senate in the last year of his life. Calder created stage sets for more than

4104-533: The wall, with moving objects suspended from their armatures. While not denying Calder's power as a sculptor, an alternate view of the history of twentieth-century art cites Calder's turning away in the early 1930s from his motor-powered works in favor of the wind-driven mobile as marking a decisive moment in Modernism's abandonment of its earlier commitment to the machine as a critical and potentially expressive new element in human affairs. According to this viewpoint,

4176-743: Was El Sol Rojo , constructed outside the Estadio Azteca for the 1968 Summer Olympics "Cultural Olympiad" events in Mexico City . Many of his public art works were commissioned by renowned architects; for example, I.M. Pei commissioned La Grande Voile , a 25-ton, 40-foot high (12 m) stabile sculpture for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1966. Most of Calder's monumental stationary and mobile sculptures were made after 1962 at Etablissements Biémont in Tours , France. He would create

4248-462: Was Jewish and of German descent and his father was Calvinist and of Scottish descent, but Calder never practiced a religion and rejected nationalism. Calder's grandfather, sculptor Alexander Milne Calder , was born in Scotland, had immigrated to Philadelphia in 1868, and is best known for the colossal statue of William Penn on Philadelphia City Hall 's tower. His father, Alexander Stirling Calder ,

4320-403: Was a commission from Dallas-based Braniff International Airways to paint a full-size Douglas DC-8 -62 four-engined jet as a "flying canvas". George Stanley Gordon , founder of the New York City advertising agency Gordon and Shortt, approached Calder with the idea of painting a jet in 1972, but Calder responded that he did not paint toys. When Gordon told him it was a real, full-sized airliner he

4392-482: Was a mechanical engineer, that's all". At Stevens, Calder was a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity and excelled in mathematics. He was well-liked and the class yearbook contained the following description, "Sandy is evidently always happy, or perhaps up to some joke, for his face is always wrapped up in that same mischievous, juvenile grin. This is certainly the index to the man's character in this case, for he

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4464-747: Was a well-known sculptor who created many public installations, a majority of them in Philadelphia. Calder's mother was a professional portrait artist , who had studied at the Académie Julian and the Sorbonne in Paris from around 1888 until 1893. She moved to Philadelphia, where she met Stirling Calder while studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts . Calder's parents married on February 22, 1895. Alexander Calder's sister, Margaret Calder Hayes,

4536-404: Was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and his monumental public sculptures. Calder preferred not to analyze his work, saying, "Theories may be all very well for the artist himself, but they shouldn't be broadcast to other people." Alexander "Sandy" Calder

4608-458: Was born in 1898 in Lawnton, Pennsylvania . His birthdate remains a source of confusion. According to Calder's mother, Nanette (née Lederer), Calder was born on August 22, yet his birth certificate at Philadelphia City Hall, based on a hand-written ledger, stated July 22. When Calder's family learned of the birth certificate, they asserted with certainty that city officials had made a mistake. His mother

4680-408: Was bought for $ 18.5 million in 2012. Calder's 7.5-foot-long hanging mobile Poisson volant (Flying Fish) (1957) fetched $ 25.9 million, setting an auction record for the sculptor at Christie's New York in 2014. Beginning in 1966, winners of the National Magazine Awards are awarded an "Ellie", a copper-colored stabile resembling an elephant, which was designed by Calder. Two months after his death,

4752-653: Was commissioned but went uncompleted following his death. In 1975 Calder was commissioned to paint a BMW 3.0 CSL automobile, which would be the first vehicle in the BMW Art Car Project. Calder created over 2,000 pieces of jewelry over the course of his career, many as gifts for friends. Several pieces reflect his fascination with art from Africa and other continents. They were mostly made of brass and steel, with bits of ceramic, wood and glass. Calder rarely used solder; when he needed to join strips of metal, he linked them with loops, bound them with snippets of wire or fashioned rivets. Calder created his first pieces in 1906 at

4824-430: Was held in 1915. During Calder's high school years (1912–1915), the family moved back and forth between New York and California. In each new location, Calder's parents reserved cellar space as a studio for their son. Near the end of this period, Calder stayed with friends in California while his parents moved back to New York, so that he could graduate from Lowell High School in San Francisco .   Calder graduated with

4896-411: Was in 1927 at the Gallery of Jacques Seligmann in Paris. His first solo show in a US commercial gallery was in 1928 at the Weyhe Gallery in New York City. He exhibited with the Abstraction-Création group in Paris in 1933. In 1935, he had his first solo museum exhibition in the United States at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago . In New York, he was championed from the early 1930s by

4968-445: Was installed on Bunker Hill, Los Angeles to serve as "a distinctive landmark". The plaza site was designed in tiers to maximize the sculpture's visual effects. In 1974, Calder unveiled two sculptures, Flamingo at Federal Plaza and Universe at Sears Tower , in Chicago, Illinois, accompanied by the exhibition Alexander Calder: A Retrospective Exhibition, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago which opened simultaneously with

5040-400: Was instrumental in the development of the UC Berkeley Art Museum . Four-year-old Calder posed nude for his father's sculpture The Man Cub , a cast of which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In 1902 he also completed his earliest sculpture, a clay elephant. In 1905 his father contracted tuberculosis , and Calder's parents moved to a ranch in Oracle, Arizona , leaving

5112-409: Was proposing, the artist immediately gave his approval. Gordon felt that Braniff, known for melding the worlds of fashion and design with the world of aviation, would be the perfect company to carry out the idea. Braniff Chairman Harding Lawrence was highly receptive and a contract was drawn up in 1973 calling for the painting of one Douglas DC-8-62 jet liner, dubbed Flying Colors , and 50 gouaches for

5184-446: Was synonymous with the term "kinetic art", describing sculptural works in which motion is a defining property. While motor or crank-driven moving sculptures may have initially prompted it, the word "mobile" later came to refer more specifically to Calder's free-moving creations. Calder in many respects invented an art form where objects (typically brightly coloured, abstract shapes fashioned from sheet metal) are connected by wire much like

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