Calder - "Balloons" - Lithograph showing 8 abstract balloons, 1 blue, 1 black, 5 red and 1 yellow above blue shapes appearing to be body of water

Alexander Calder • American (1898-1976)

Balloons C: 1973 • Lithograph on Paper 39-1/2” x 28”

Le Grande Cirque de Calder first appeared on a bright Paris street corner in 1927. It was the brainchild of a third generation American sculptor (fourth counting his great-grandfather who carved tombstones in his native Scotland). Alexander Calder, son of Alexander S. Calder and grandson of Alexander M. Calder, was a trained mechanical engineer with the soul of an artist. “To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there’s no such thing as perfect.” Calder spent his life pursuing and escaping perfection.

While studying art in “Roaring 20’s” Gay Paree, Calder began building mechanical circus performers from wire, cork, wood and other found objects. There was a mechanical horse trotting around the main ring until it tripped a lever springing a small wire acrobat into the air and onto the horses back (almost) every time. A mechanized lion chased the Ringmaster’s tassled whip. An acrobat with hooked hands and feet moved effortlessly from one swinging trapeze to another until Calder used a finger to knock it off the bar and tumbling onto the net below. Throughout his life, Calder kept adding mechanical acts to his artful little circus until one day, as an old man, he recreated his Paris youth while kneeling on a sidewalk beneath the famous arch first sculpted by his father.

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By this time, Calder’s fame had far surpassed all previous Calder’s. He was America’s most celebrated sculptor, the creator of delicately balanced, often monumental works that danced in the wind or turned gracefully when powered by small mechanical motors. Marcel Duchamp, one of the world’s most influential modern artists, dubbed Calder’s creations “mobiles” because they were constantly in motion. They sprang from the inventive, whimsical mind of a man born to be an artist, but fascinated by mechanical things.

The Canton Museum of Art is home to a different side of Calder, the modernist as fascinated by geometric shapes and bold colors as he was by movement. Lithographic prints allowed him to explore colorful abstract shapes in two-dimensional works with the same delicate visual balance as his better-known mobiles. Yet, at the heart of all his works was a suitcase filled with formed-wire, mechanical circus performers, the perfect expression of Calder’s most heart-felt artistic statement, “Above all, art should be fun.”

Canton Museum of Art Permanent Collection • Gift of Argosy Partners and Bond Street Partners 80.10

4 Ways to Sound Smart When Viewing at The Canton Museum of Art

1.
“Calder felt his art, especially his mobiles, represented the natural world in the way planets and space interact.”

2.
“Throughout his lifetime, he created a miniature circus of mechanical acrobats, performers and animals that he first displayed as a young Paris street artist.”

3.
“How many Paris tourists watched this odd man playing with his circus knowing they were watching one of the great artists of the 20th Century? I bet not many.”

4.
“He is most famous for his creation of moving sculptures, named ‘mobiles’ by Marcel Duchamp, one of the most influential figures in modern art. His static sculptures were, conversely called ‘stabiles’.”

Calder Timeline. Scroll over images to see timeline.

1898

Born in Lawnton, Pennsylvania. Mother, Nanette, was a portrait artist. Father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was a sculptor best known for creating the Washington Square Arch. Grandfather Alexander Milne Calder was an equally well-known sculptor who created the statue of William Penn that still graces the dome of Philadelphia City Hall. Sister, Margaret, was instrumental in development of the UC Berkeley Art Museum.

1902

Posed for his father’s sculpture, The Man Cub. The cast of this piece is now located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

1905

After his father contracted tuberculosis, his parents moved to a ranch in Oracle, Arizona. The children followed a year later. Soon the family moved further west to Pasadena, California.

1912-1915

During his high school years, the Calder family repeatedly moved back and forth from California to New York. In each location his parents made sure young Alexander had studio space in their cellar. The last year, he remained in San Francisco to graduate from Lowell High School.

1915-1919

Since his parents did not want him to suffer the life of an artist, Calder attended Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, to study Mechanical Engineering.

1922

Found work as a mechanic on the passenger ship H.F. Alexander. On one trip, sailing from San Francisco to New York City, Calder slept on deck and awoke off the Guatemalan Coast where he simultaneously witnessed a fiery sun rising on one horizon and the silver moon dipping below the opposite horizon. His future was long influenced by the idea of planets and shapes in space.

1925

Inspired by the natural wonders he had seen, he decided to pursue life as an artist and enrolled in the Art Students League in New York City. To earn money he worked as a sketch artist for the National Police Gazette where one assignment sent him to sketch the circus. He was immediately hooked.

1926

Moved to Paris to enroll in the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. Still fascinated by the circus, he began creating a miniature mechanical circus which he used as a street performer around Paris. He began creating the Cirque de Calder after a Serbian toy merchant encouraged him to make mechanical toys.

1927

First solo exhibition at the Gallery of Jacques Seligmann in Paris.

1929

While sailing from Paris to New York he met his future wife, Louisa James, the grandniece of author Henry James and philosopher William James. They married in Paris in 1931. They became friends with many avant-garde artists, including Marcel Duchamp, one of the most influential modern artists of the 20th Century.

1930

His visit to the studio of Piet Mondrian, pushed him toward even more abstraction in his art, a direction he was already headed.

1931

His moving sculptures, powered by small mechanical motors, were christened “mobiles” by Marcel Duchamp. A year later he moved on to hanging sculptures that move in the wind or indoor air currents. At the same time he started producing large static abstract sculptures dubbed “Stabiles” by modern artist Jean Arp.

1933

The Calder’s returned to America and settled in a Roxbury, Connecticut, farmhouse. Daughter Sandra was born in 1935. Second daughter, Mary was born in 1939.

1936

One of three Americans included in Alfred H. Barr Jr.’s exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art.

1943

A well-received retrospective of his work was staged by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

1952

Represented the United States at the Venice Biennale and was awarded the main prize for sculpture.

1955

Alexander and Louisa Calder spent three months traveling around India where Calder produced 9 sculptures and jewelry.

1963

He returned to France, settling into a new workshop overlooking a scenic river valley in Indre-et-Loire. He donated one of his sculptures to the town and it remains in the town square.

1966

Published his Autobiography with Pictures with the help of son-in-law, Jean Davidson.

1972

Received a $100,000 commission to paint a full-size airplane for Braniff International Airlines. In 1975 Calder painted the first vehicle in the BMW Art Car Project.

1976

Unexpectedly died shortly after the opening of a major retrospective show of his work at the Whitney Museum in New York.

1998

U.S. Postal Service issued a 32-cent stamp honoring the man who revolutionized sculpture, Alexander Calder.

2014

His hanging mobile Poisson Volant (Flying Fish) was sold for $25.9 million at Christie’s in New York City.