Alexander Calder (Lawnton, 1898 – New York, 1976) was born into a family of artists. His father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was a sculptor, and his mother, Nanette Lederer, a painter. Surrounded by creativity from an early age, Calder began making toys, doll jewelry, and metal silhouettes as a child.
After earning a degree in engineering in 1919, he enrolled at the Art Students League of New York in 1923, while working as an illustrator for the National Police Gazette. In 1926, he moved to Paris, where he immersed himself in the French avant-garde scene and created his now-famous Cirque Calder. This miniature traveling circus — complete with animals, acrobats, and props made from wire and found objects — was animated by Calder himself in live performances. Compact enough to fit in a suitcase, it was later also performed in New York.
In 1928, Calder held his first solo exhibition at the Weyhe Gallery in New York, followed by major shows in Paris and Berlin. During the late 1920s and early 1930s in Paris, he formed friendships with artists and intellectuals including Joan Miró, Fernand Léger, James Johnson Sweeney, and Marcel Duchamp. It was Duchamp who coined the term mobiles to describe Calder’s innovative kinetic sculptures, which he began creating in 1931.
A pivotal moment came in October 1930, when Calder visited Piet Mondrian’s studio in Paris. Deeply inspired by Mondrian’s geometric abstraction, Calder shifted toward sculptural abstraction and soon joined the Abstraction-Création group, alongside Mondrian, Jean Hélion, and Jean Arp. Arp later coined the term stabiles to describe Calder’s static sculptures, in contrast to his moving ones.
In 1933, Calder returned to the United States with his wife, Louisa, and began working with the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York the following year. His first large-scale sculptures in sheet metal, intended for outdoor display, date from this period. Among them were the Mercury Fountain for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris, and a striking piece designed for the main staircase of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
During World War II, metal shortages led Calder to experiment with wood. This resulted in a distinctive series of works known as the Constellations — a name suggested by James Johnson Sweeney and Marcel Duchamp. In 1943, Duchamp curated a major retrospective of Calder’s work at MoMA.
In the fall of 1946, the landmark exhibition Alexander Calder: Mobiles, Stabiles, Constellations was held at Galerie Louis Carré in Paris. It was visited by Henri Matisse and featured an essay in the catalog by Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1949, Calder took part in the 3rd Sculpture International organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he presented his largest sculpture to date, International Mobile.
In the final decades of his career, Calder focused primarily on monumental public artworks. In 1962, he unveiled Teodelapio for Sculpture in the City, a major international exhibition curated by Giovanni Carandente. His large-scale works were later installed in public spaces around the world, including New York’s JFK Airport, UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris, and the 1967 World Expo in Montreal. For the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, Calder created El Sol Rojo (The Red Sun), his largest work, standing 20.5 meters tall.
In 1964, the Guggenheim Museum in New York hosted a major retrospective of his work. Twelve years later, in 1976, the Whitney Museum of American Art presented another comprehensive retrospective. Just a few weeks after the opening, Calder passed away at the age of 78.
