Alexander Calder | Mobiles, paintings and prints for sale, auction results and history

‘Why must art be static?’ asked American-born sculptor Alexander Calder
in 1932, the same year he exhibited his first now-iconic mobiles. ‘The
next step in sculpture is motion.’ Calder’s revolutionary hanging
sculptures had a profound effect on the development of modern
sculpture. Masterpieces of abstraction, they were the first works of
Kinetic Art. Together with his printmaking, painting, drawing and
non-moving ‘stabile’ sculptures, Calder’s mobiles form a

body of work now considered among the most important and valuable in 20th-century
art.

Calder was born in Philadelphia in 1898 and trained at the Art Student
League in New York. He began his career as an illustrator, sketching
sporting events and circus scenes for magazines. Drawing, printmaking
and painting would remain an important facet of his work. By 1926, now
dividing his time between New York and Paris, he had begun making
animated toys and curious wire-and-wood figurines. Many of these would
become Calder’s Circus (1926–32), a surrealist toy circus.
These performances earned Calder a following among the luminaries of
Dadaism and Surrealism. Many, including Marcel Duchamp and Joan Miró, would remain champions and lifelong friends.

In 1930, a visit to Piet Mondrian’s studio had a profound impact on the direction of Calder’s work. The
playful figuration of his early Surrealist toys and sculptures gave way
not only to overt abstraction but also to the colour and
draughtsman-like use of wire seen in early pieces like Croisière (1931) and Mobile (c.1932). Over the
following decades Calder would continue to explore his method of
abstraction, finessing his mobiles and stabiles. He was also a prolific

jewellery maker, crafting exquisite three-dimensional necklaces and bracelets.

As his reputation grew, he began to receive public commissions on a
monumental scale. His mobile .125 (1957) in New York’s JFK
airport and the colossal stabile Flamingo (1973), at Federal
Center Plaza in Chicago, are vast works of public art. Yet they still
contain all the wit and charm of the young Calder who spent his early
career making mechanical toys for his Surrealist circus. Calder died in
New York in 1976.