the wire years
alexander calder the wire years
before the mobiles
Alexander Calder will always be remembered as the man who put sculpture in motion. As the first art form to truly utilize motion as an element of form, Calder’s mobiles were a significant milestone in modern art. Yet, were it not for his early sculptures and experimentation with wire, Calder’s later kinetic work would not have been possible. Before Calder began creating mobiles and large scale commissions for which he is most famous, his career was devoted to creating small scale objects from found materials. Throughout the late 1920’s and 1930’s, these small sculptures defined Calder’s career, and awarded him international recognition.
New York Philadelphia
globetrotting
Calder’s prolific artistic career began in 1923, when he moved to New York from his hometown of Philadelphia at the age of 25. It was here that he began painting at the Art Student’s league, and took a job illustrating for the National Police Gazette, which sent him to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus to sketch circus scenes.
Paris
Attracted by Paris’ reputation as an artistic center, Calder moved there in 1926 and earned his living as an illustrator and a toy designer. At the same time, he was developing a miniature circus. Calder created his circus figures and props mostly out of wire, a material he soon adapted for his sculptures. Over the course of the next five years (1926–1931) Calder created and performed his miniature circus throughout Europe and America. This work proved to be a catalyst for his sculptures to follow, and brought him international recognition. Calder quickly became known as the “king of wire and string.”
wire bending Realizing the vast capabilities of his flexible and inexepensive materials, Calder expanded his wire creations to jewelry, appliances, and small portraits. Calder soon began to sculpt portraits of his friends and public figures of the day. Like his Circus, Calder’s wire portrait heads span a considerable period of his Paris years of the late 1920s, and also serve as a diary of who he knew, and where he knew them. Calder’s subjects ranged from his close friends and family, to Josephine Baker, Joan Miro, and other well known names. Word traveled about the inventive artist, and in 1928 Calder was given his first solo gallery show at the Weyhe Gallery in New York. The show at Weyhe was soon followed by others in New York, as well as in Paris and Berlin.
The Spirit of St Louis, c. 1928
For his purposes, industrial steel wire was an ideal medium. It was cheap, malleable, portable and equally adaptable to precision work and doodling, which to him were almost the same thing. Wire was like three-dimensional ink; it was a means of combining drawing and sculpture in space.
Calder bending wire in his Paris studio, 1930
“I think best
Calder’s first wire portrait, Josephine Baker, 1926.
in wire�
Josephine Baker IV c. 1928
Although his wire portraits were quick and imprecise, Calder often made sketches prior to executing his portraits in wire.
Top
Varese, 1930 Middle
Eduard Penkala, 1929 Bottom
Dr. Hans Curlis, 1929
LEFT
Laura Canade Zigrosser, 1928. MIDDLE
Jenny McKean, 1930. RIGHT: Joan Miro, 1930.
LEFT
Head with Lock of Hair, 1929. MIDDLE
Carl Zigrosser, 1928. RIGHT:
Margie McKean, 1930.
LEFT
Head with Lock of Hair, 1929. MIDDLE
Marion Greenwood, 1928. RIGHT
Portrait of a man, 1928.
LEFT
Head with Lock of Hair, 1929. MIDDLE
Self-Portrait, 1929. RIGHT
Masque, 1929.
“Mr. Calder, an ingenious Yankee, is in a class by himself. Instead of squirting tubes of paint on canvas or mutilating marble, he twists pieces of iron wire — with consummate skill into a likeness of his model.” Kiki —Queen of the Paris Artist’s Studio
Soda Fountain, c. 1927
the shock that starting things 1930 marked a major transition in Calder’s art, abandoning the wire and wood figures of the previous four years for abstract constructions. In October of 1930, Calder visited Piet Mondrian’s Paris studio, which Calder credited as initiating the “shock that started things.” Calder noted that he was especially impressed by a wall of colored paper rectangles that Mondrian continually repositioned for compositional experiments, and imagined how he could bring this abstraction to three dimensions.
Calder’s studio at 14, rue de la Colonie, Paris, 1933.
“I was very much moved by Mondrian’s studio, large beautiful and irregular in shape as it was...and I thought how fine it would be if everything there moved...”
Pantograph, 1931.
Many of Calder’s abstract creations show a clear reference to the cosmos, which would become even more pronounced in his mechanized works. Calder’s cosmic designs consist of simple points or lines suspended in space, projecting into an interstellar space. In these creations, Calder was exploring theories about the system of the universe, and planetary orbits.
Mobile au Plomb, 1931.
LEFT
Half Circle, Quarter Circle, 1932. RIGHT
Two Spheres within a Sphere, 1931.
Cone d’ebene, 1932.
set in motion
Calder created motored objects that could move to create different visual effects. In a short while, however, he realized that the mechanized movement didn’t have the fluidity or the surprise he wanted in his work. He decided to let them hang and have the wind or a slight touch begin their movement. Whe Marcel Duchamp saw them, he named them “mobiles” (a pun on the French for “to move” and “motive”). These new sculptures, arranged by the chance operations of the wind, went against everything that sculpture had been. They were simply about form and color and the joy in creating both. By his early thirties Alexander Calder had not only found a project he would continue for the rest of his life, he had created a unique form of sculpture that broadened the parameters of art.
1898
Born in Philadelphia
1919
graduates from engineering school
1923
Moves to New York, begins painting
1926
Moves to Paris
First one man show, Wehe Gallery, New York.
Moves to Paris and begins his miniature circus
Exhibits toys
First wire sculpture, Josephine Baker
1943
MoMA retrospective
1952
first prize, Venice Biennale
dies in New York
1928
1938
first retrospective of work
1927
1933
moves to Connecticut
1926
1931
begins mobile career
1976
wire career
circus
wire portraits
Visits Mondrian’s studio, rethinks entire sculpture career
Joined AbstractionCreation group.
Begins making wire jewelry Experiments with abstract painting, and transitions to geometric abstraction in his wire sculptures.
abstraction
First mobile construction
mobiles
1933
1932
Mobiles exhibited at Galerie Vignon, Paris.
1931
1930
1929
Exhibits work at Galerie Billiet, Paris; Galerie Neumann Nierendorf, Berlin.
First abstract constructions shown at Galerie Percier, Paris.
references The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Alexander Calder. New York: Library of Congress, 1964. Print. Marter, Joan. Alexander Calder. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Print. Image Credits Simon, Joan and Brigitte Leal. Alexander Calder: the Paris Years 1926–1933. New York: Yale University Press, 2009. Print.
This book was created by Julia Gordon for Visual Information Studio, fall 2011 at Washington University in St Louis. Typefaces used include Vista Slab and Interstate.