I Know an Artist by Susie Hodge

Author:Susie Hodge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quarto Publishing Group
Published: 2019-03-16T16:00:00+00:00

Was lifelong friends with

CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI

THE INVENTOR of free-moving, or kinetic, sculptures, Alexander Calder studied mechanical engineering and applied kinetics before attending the Art Students League of New York for two years. In 1925, he worked as a freelance artist for the National Police Gazette, and spent a couple of weeks sketching at a circus, which had a significant effect on his career. In 1926, he had an exhibition of paintings in New York, and later that year went to Paris to study art at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. There, he began creating Cirque Calder (1926–31): models of animals and human figures made of wood and wire, which he moved manually to perform, while giving a French commentary. He first exhibited his circus at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1927. From then, he divided his time between France and the United States.

In 1929, he began to make jewellery using wire, and also created more figurative oil paintings. However, a visit to the studio of Piet Mondrian changed his outlook. Within a year, he exhibited his first abstract wire works and produced his initial, ground-breaking, mechanised sculptures, which pioneered kinetic art. Initially, he used motors to make these sculptures move, but soon abandoned the mechanics and relied on air currents instead. Marcel Duchamp named these moving artworks ‘mobiles’, while Hans Arp called his static sculptures ‘stabiles’. Wire became Calder’s main method of ‘drawing’, and his mobiles were usually made of lightweight wire and painted tin so that they moved even in the faintest air currents.

In 1933, Calder began to create even larger hanging works and outdoor sculptures, concurrently making sets and costumes for theatrical productions; he also continued to stage performances of Cirque Calder. During the Second World War, he created brightly coloured gouache paintings while also producing sculptures, the latter of which were predominantly made of wood because of metal shortages. In 1943, he was the youngest artist to have a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Several years before, he had met Joan Miró in Paris and the two became good friends. Calder created Portrait for Joan Miró out of wire in c.1930, and Miró wrote a poem about Calder. They both produced works titled Constellations, and Calder once declared: ‘Archaeologists will tell you there’s a little bit of Miró in Calder and a little bit of Calder in Miró.’ Describing his mobiles as ‘four-dimensional drawings’, Calder sought to respond to Miró’s paintings by generating similar outlines, spaces, shapes and colours, but as mobiles so that they constantly changed.

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