Alexander Calder

This handsome volume celebrates Alexander Calder’s fascination with the game of chess. It comprises two parts: the first features scholarly and experimental texts exploring such topics as Calder’s relationship with Marcel Duchamp (who was famously obsessed with chess) and his involvement in the 1944 exhibition The Imagery of Chess at Julien Levy Gallery. Archival documentation, ephemera and reproductions of Calder’s chess sets—including photographs of each chess piece and related works on paper—are also featured. The second part of the book presents The Knightmares Portfolio, an approximation of an unrealized publication conceived in 1944 but never published. It comprises 46 chess drawings by Calder inscribed with titles, alternate titles and puns by Duchamp, Mary Reynolds and Calder.

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) settled in Paris in the late 1920s, and soon found himself at the center of the city’s artistic avant-garde. There, he developed his seminal Cirque Calder, a performance artwork comprising dozens of miniature handmade objects, and a group of standalone figurative works in wire. In 1930, Calder shifted towards abstraction with his invention of the mobile—an abstract sculpture made of independent parts that incorporate natural or mechanical movement. Calder would continue to explore the possibilities of this visual language for the rest of his career, though eventually shifting to monumental constructions and public works.

Alexander Calder’s work first appeared in the Museum of Modern Art’s galleries in 1930, in the exhibition Painting and Sculpture by Living Americans. Over the next decades the artist’s connection with the Museum would be deep, productive and mutually beneficial. Calder cultivated friendships and working relationships with notable figures, including Alfred H. Barr Jr., the Museum’s founding director, and James Johnson Sweeney, with whom he collaborated on his expansive retrospective exhibition in 1943. His work is imprinted on MoMA’s early history, not only for its material and conceptual innovation but also for its presence at significant moments, such as a mobile made to hang over the lobby’s grand staircase on the occasion of the new Goodwin and Stone building (Lobster Trap and Fish Tail, which hangs there to this day); an elaborate candelabra to adorn the tables at a celebratory anniversary event; and a sculpture to fly off a flagpole to advertise the landmark exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art.

Alexander Calder: Modern from the Start celebrates this extraordinarily fertile relationship between an institution and an artist who was both an important creative partner and, with his magnificent gift of 19 works in 1966, a major donor. Through MoMA, Calder came to be known as a pioneer of modern sculpture, and through Calder, MoMA came to understand itself as an American museum of modern art.

After studying engineering, Alexander Calder (1898–1976) moved to Paris in the late 1920s, where he found himself at the center of the city’s artistic avant-garde. There, he developed his Cirque Calder, a performance artwork comprising dozens of miniature handmade objects, and a group of standalone figurative works in wire. Turning toward abstraction in 1930, Calder invented the mobile—an abstract sculpture made of independent parts that incorporate natural or mechanical movement. He would continue to explore the possibilities of this visual language for the rest of his career, eventually shifting to monumental constructions and public works.

With multiple essays by renowned scholars, artwork and installation images, and a suite of historic photographs of Alexander Calder’s (1898-1976) work taken by Marc Vaux in the 1930s, this catalog traces the breadth of Calder’s innovative practice, leading up to his conception of the mobile in 1931—an unprecedented form of kinetic sculpture that radically altered the trajectory of modern art.

Alexander Calder is one of the most acclaimed and influential sculptors of the 20th century. He is renowned for his invention of wire sculpture—coined by critics as “drawings in space”—and the mobile, a kinetic sculpture of suspended abstract elements whose actual movement creates ever-changing compositions. Also included is a lively series of drawings Calder made at the Bronx and Central Park zoos of animals in motion, which recall his wire sculptures of the same subjects.

Calder: Nonspace takes its title from a 1963 essay by American novelist James Jones, written after his encounter with a series of large-scale sculptures at Alexander Calder’s studio in Saché, France. In his essay, reprinted in this book, Jones astutely describes Calder’s deep understanding of architectural and natural environments, which enabled him to reorder a viewer’s perception of the world surrounding his sculptures.

This catalog explores this angle on Calder’s monumental vision by documenting an installation at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles. It consists of more than 30 stabiles, mobiles and standing mobiles woven through a specially designed environment created by New York architectural designer Stephanie Goto (whose projects include the New York restaurant Piora and the apartment of chef Daniel Boulud), along with five large-scale works set outdoors.

Goto also contributes an essay that explores the transformation of a classical gallery into a unified experience, and an essay by Andrew Berardini looks at the moments in Calder’s work where space is transformed by art.

Two of the most important American sculptors of the 20th century, Alexander Calder (1898–1976) and David Smith (1906–65) pushed sculptural practice in metal to new heights over the course of their careers. Bringing together pivotal sculpture of a historic moment in American art history, this monograph also features photographs from Italian Ugo Mulas, who met both sculptors in Spoleto in 1962 and documented them throughout his life. This publication is released on the occasion of an exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Zürich from June 10 to September 17, 2017.

Featuring over 90 works by Alexander Calder (1898–1976) including paintings, mobiles, stabiles, jewelry, domestic objects and furniture, plus six monumental outdoor sculptures, this catalog vividly illustrates a walkthrough of an ambitious exhibition in the British countryside in Somerset. Drawing a parallel with Calder’s longtime home and studio in Roxbury, Connecticut, it includes many previously unseen works.

An essay by Jessica Holmes focuses on the artist’s handcrafted domestic objects, offering insight into Calder’s life and inventive practice. Susan Braeuer Dam focuses on Calder’s move to Roxbury in 1933 and the shifts in his work, drawing upon themes of nature, process and monumentality, specifically as related to the 1934 sculptures surveyed here.

“Calder reached his artistic maturity in 1920s Paris at a time when the city was very much the center of burgeoning avant-garde experimentation. His early years in Paris marked the beginning of a lasting love for France, where he met many of his lifelong artist friends,” explains Alexander S. C. Rower, grandson of the artist and president of the Calder Foundation. “Calder’s time in France, and his continued legacy there, constitutes a natural and rich subject for study.”

The revue undertakes an in-depth exploration of the significant years Calder spent in France, beginning with his crucial years in Paris from 1926 to 1933, during which time the artist firmly established his imprint on the avant-garde scene. After the war, Calder spent significant periods of time in Paris in 1946, in Aix-en-Provence in 1953, and finally in Saché in the Loire Valley, where he would design his final monumental studio in 1963. The revue unveils the studios where Calder lived and worked through archival documentation, offering deeper insight into his work in each of these enigmatic places.

Calder in France also celebrates the legacy of Calder’s Saché studio over the past 25 years as a residency program for contemporary artists. Over the past quarter century, fifty artists have worked in Calder’s studio, including Martin Puryear, Tara Donovan, Ernesto Neto and Sarah Sze. The revue contains interviews with Tadashi Kawamata, Abraham Cruzvillegas and Rachel Harrison, a selection of images of past residents’ work, and a special portfolio of models for new sculptures by 2014 resident Monika Sosnowska. The revue also highlights Calder’s relationship with former Cahiers d'Art publisher Christian Zervos through the reproduction of several pivotal essays on Calder published during the artist’s lifetime.

Images of the artist’s work are published alongside seminal texts by Alexander S. C. Rower, and Susan Braeuer Dam, Director of Research and Publications at the Calder Foundation. The revue is also enriched with contributions by Alfred Pacquement, former Director of the Musée National d’Art moderne, Centre Pompidou and President of the Board of the Atelier Calder; Raphaël Bouvier, Curator at the Fondation Beyeler; Robert Rubin, architectural historian; and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of the Serpentine Gallery in London. Accompanying the texts are defining photographs of Calder and his work by Ugo Mulas and also Agnès Varda, with an interview by curator and art historian Joan Simon.

Photographer and graphic designer Herbert Matter, a close friend of Alexander Calder, had the privilege of photographing the artist’s sculptures at different stages of their realization and capturing Calder at work in his studios and in his Roxbury, Connecticut, home. Calder by Matter offers a new perspective on the sculptor’s life and work, presenting over 300 photographs of the artist and his family, many of which are previously unpublished.