Alexander Calder | |
|---|---|
 Alexander Calder, byCarl Van Vechten, 1947 | |
| Born | July 22, 1898 Lawnton,Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | November 11, 1976(1976-11-11) (aged 78) New York City, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Stevens Institute of Technology,Art Students League of New York |
| Known for | Sculpture |
| Movement | Kinetic art,surrealism,abstraction |
Alexander"Sandy" Calder (/ˈkɔːldər/; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovativemobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and his monumental public sculptures.[1] Calder preferred not to analyze his work, saying, "Theories may be all very well for the artist himself, but they shouldn't be broadcast to other people."[2] His father,Alexander Stirling Calder, and grandfather,Alexander Milne Calder, were also sculptors.
Calder was born in 1898 in the Lawnton section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[3] His birthdate remains a source of confusion. According to Calder's mother, Nanette (née Lederer), Calder was born on August 22, yet his birth certificate at Philadelphia City Hall, based on a hand-written ledger, stated July 22. When Calder's family learned of the birth certificate, they asserted with certainty that city officials had made a mistake. His mother was Jewish and of German descent and his father was Calvinist and of Scottish descent, but Calder never practiced a religion and rejected nationalism.[4][5]
Calder's grandfather, sculptorAlexander Milne Calder, was born in Scotland, had immigrated to Philadelphia in 1868, and is best known for the colossal statue ofWilliam Penn onPhiladelphia City Hall's tower. His father,Alexander Stirling Calder, was a well-known sculptor who created many public installations, a majority of them in Philadelphia. Calder's mother was a professional portraitartist, who had studied at theAcadémie Julian and theSorbonne in Paris from around 1888 until 1893. She moved to Philadelphia, where she met Stirling Calder while studying at thePennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Calder's parents married on February 22, 1895. Alexander Calder's sister, Margaret Calder Hayes, was instrumental in the development of theUC Berkeley Art Museum.[6]
At the age of three, Calder posed nude for his father's sculptureMan Cub, a cast of which is in theMetropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.[7]: 12 In 1902 he also completed his earliest sculpture, a clay elephant.[8] In 1905 his father contractedtuberculosis, and Calder's parents moved to a ranch inOracle, Arizona, leaving the children in the care of family friends for a year.[9] The children were reunited with their parents in March 1906 and stayed at the Arizona ranch during that summer.[7]: 19 [10]
The Calder family moved from Arizona toPasadena, California. The windowed cellar of the family home became Calder's first studio and he received his first set of tools. He used scraps of copper wire to make jewelry for his sister's dolls.[11] On January 1, 1907, Nanette Calder took her son to theTournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, where he observed a four-horse-chariot race. This style of event later became the finale of Calder's miniature circus performances.[12] Calder would create two small sculptures around this time, depicting a dog and a duck, both fashioned from brass sheet metal.[7]: 106-107 The dog was ostensibly made by Calder while the family was in Pasadena as a Christmas gift for his parents.[6]: 41 The small brass duck could be considered Calder's first mobile, as it featured a curved base that allowed it to rock when gently touched.[7]: 108 [6]: 41
In late 1909 the family returned to Philadelphia, where Calder briefly attendedGermantown Academy, before the family settled inCroton-on-Hudson, New York in 1910.[7]: 117 [13] During his high school years in Croton, Calder was befriended by his father's painter friendEverett Shinn, with whom he built a gravity-powered system of mechanical trains. Calder described it, "We ran the train on wooden rails held by spikes; a chunk of iron racing down the incline speeded the cars. We even lit up some cars with candle lights".[14] After Croton, the Calders moved toSpuyten Duyvil inthe Bronx to be closer to New York City, as Stirling Calder was renting a studio inGreenwich Village.[7]: 133 While living in Spuyten Duyvil, Calder attended high school in nearbyYonkers. In 1912, Calder's father was appointed acting chief of the Department of Sculpture of the 1915Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, California,[15] and began work on sculptures for it.
During Calder's high school years of 1912-1915, the family moved back and forth between New York and California. In each new location, Calder's parents reserved cellar space as a studio for their son. Near the end of this period, Calder stayed with friends in California while his parents moved back to New York, so that he could graduate fromLowell High School in San Francisco.[16] Calder graduated from high school in the class of 1915.[7]: 151
Alexander Calder's parents did not want him to be an artist, so he decided to study mechanical engineering. An intuitive engineer since childhood, Calder did not even know what mechanical engineering was. "I was not very sure what this term meant, but I thought I'd better adopt it," he later wrote. He enrolled at theStevens Institute of Technology inHoboken, New Jersey, in 1915.[17] When asked why he decided to study mechanical engineering instead of art Calder said, "I wanted to be an engineer because some guy I rather liked was a mechanical engineer, that's all".[18] At Stevens, Calder was a member of theDelta Tau Delta fraternity and excelled in mathematics.[19] He was well-liked and the class yearbook contained the following description, "Sandy is evidently always happy, or perhaps up to some joke, for his face is always wrapped up in that same mischievous, juvenile grin. This is certainly the index to the man's character in this case, for he is one of the best natured fellows there is."[18]
In the summer of 1916, Calder spent five weeks training at thePlattsburgh Civilian Military Training Camp. In 1918, he joined the Student's Army Training Corps, Naval Section, at Stevens and was made guide of the battalion.[20]
Calder received a degree from Stevens in 1919.[17] He held a variety of jobs includinghydraulic engineer anddraughtsman for theNew York Edison Company. In June 1922, Calder took a mechanic position on the passenger shipH. F. Alexander. While sailing from San Francisco to New York City, Calder slept on deck and awoke one early morning off the Guatemalan Coast and witnessed both the sun rising and the full moon setting on opposite horizons. He described in his autobiography, "It was early one morning on a calm sea, off Guatemala, when over my couch—a coil of rope—I saw the beginning of a fiery red sunrise on one side and the moon looking like a silver coin on the other."[21]
TheH.F. Alexander docked in San Francisco and Calder traveled toAberdeen, Washington, where his sister and her husband, Kenneth Hayes resided. Calder took a job as a timekeeper at a logging camp. The mountain scenery inspired him to write home to request paints and brushes. Shortly after this, Calder decided to move back to New York to pursue a career as an artist.
In New York City, Calder enrolled at theArt Students League, studying briefly withGeorge Luks,Boardman Robinson, andJohn Sloan.[22] While a student, he worked for theNational Police Gazette where, in 1925, one of his assignments was sketching theRingling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Calder became fascinated with the circus action, a theme that would reappear in his later work.
Calder moved to Paris in July 1926,[7]: 244 travelling toHull as a crew member of the British cargo steamshipGalileo, then continuing by train and boat.[7]: 247-248 He enrolled in theAcadémie de la Grande Chaumière, and established a studio at 22 rue Daguerre inMontparnasse, later moving to 7 villa Brune in the same district. In June 1929, while traveling by boat from Paris to New York, Calder met his future wife, Louisa James (1905–1996), a daughter ofEdward Holton James and grandniece of authorHenry James and philosopherWilliam James. They married in 1931. While in Paris, Calder befriended a number ofavant-garde artists, includingJoan Miró,Fernand Léger,Jean Arp,[11] andMarcel Duchamp. Leger wrote a preface for the catalogue of Calder's first exhibition of abstract constructions held at the Galerie Percier in 1931.[23] Calder and Louisa returned to America in 1933 to a farmhouse they purchased inRoxbury, Connecticut, where they raised a family (Sandra born 1935, Mary born 1939). DuringWorld War II, Calder attempted to join theMarines as a camoufleur (seeList of camoufleurs), but was rejected. In 1955 he and Louisa traveled through India for three months, where Calder produced nine sculptures as well as some jewelry.[24]
In 1963, Calder settled into anew workshop, overlooking the valley of the Lower Chevrière to the village ofSaché inIndre-et-Loire (France). He donated to thetown a sculpture, which since 1974 has been situated in the town square. Throughout his artistic career, Calder named many of his works in French, regardless of where they were destined for eventual display.In 1966, Calder published hisAutobiography with Pictures with the help of his son-in-law, Jean Davidson.
Calder died unexpectedly in November 1976 ofa heart attack,[25] shortly after the opening of a major retrospective show at theWhitney Museum in New York.
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In Paris in 1926, Calder began to create hisCirque Calder, a miniature circus fashioned from wire, cloth, string, rubber, cork, and other found objects. He likened his use of these miscellaneous objects, often old or discarded, toKurt Schwitters' use of found objects in his artwork, describing Schwitter'sMerz as the "[rejected], what is cast off".[7]: 104 Designed to be transportable (it grew to fill five large suitcases), the circus was presented on both sides of the Atlantic. Soon, hisCirque Calder[26] (on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art at present) became popular with the Parisian avant-garde. He also inventedwire sculpture, or "drawing in space", and in 1929 had his first solo show of these sculptures in Paris at Galerie Billiet.Hi!, in the collection of theHonolulu Museum of Art, is an early example of the artist's wire sculpture. The painterJules Pascin, a friend from the cafes ofMontparnasse, wrote the preface to the catalog.
A visit toPiet Mondrian's studio in 1930, where he was impressed by the environment-as-installation, "shocked" him into fully embracingabstract art, toward which he had already been tending.[27]
It was the mixture of his experiments to develop purely abstract sculpture following his visit with Mondrian that led to his first truly kinetic sculptures, actuated by motors, that would become his signature artworks. Calder's kinetic sculptures are regarded as being among the earliest manifestations of an art that consciously departed from the traditional notion of the art work as a static object and integrated the ideas of gesture and immateriality as aesthetic factors.[28]
Dating from 1931, Calder's abstract sculptures of discrete movable parts powered by motors were christened "mobiles" byMarcel Duchamp, a French pun meaning both "motion" and "motive".[29] However, Calder found that the motorized works sometimes became monotonous in their prescribed movements. His solution, arrived at by 1932, was hanging sculptures that derived their motion from touch or air currents. The earliest of these were made of wire, found objects, and wood, a material that Calder used since the 1920s. The hanging mobiles were followed in 1934 by outdoor standing mobiles in industrial materials, which were set in motion by the open air.[30] The wind mobiles featured abstract shapes delicately balanced on pivoting rods that moved with the slightest current of air, allowing for a natural shifting play of forms and spatial relationships.[31] Calder was also experimenting with self-supporting, static,abstract sculptures, dubbed "stabiles" byJean Arp in 1932 to differentiate them from mobiles.[11] AtExposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (1937), the Spanish pavilion included Calder's sculptureMercury Fountain.
DuringWorld War II, Calder continued to sculpt, adapting to a scarcity of aluminum during the war by returning tocarved wood in a new open form of sculpture called "constellations".[32] Postwar, Calder began to cut shapes from sheet metal into evocative forms and hand-paint them in his characteristically bold hues.[33] Calder created a small group of works from around this period with a hanging base-plate, for exampleLily of Force (1945),Baby Flat Top (1946), andRed is Dominant (1947). He also made works such asSeven Horizontal Discs (1946), which, likeLily of Force (1945) andBaby Flat Top (1946), he was able to dismantle and send by mail for his upcoming show at Galerie Louis Carré in Paris, despite the stringent size restrictions imposed by the postal service at the time.[34] His 1946 show at Carré, which was organized by Duchamp, was composed mainly of hanging and standing mobiles, and it made a huge impact, as did the essay for the catalogue by French philosopherJean-Paul Sartre.[35] In 1951, Calder devised a new kind of sculpture, related structurally to his constellations. These "towers", affixed to the wall with a nail, consist of wire struts and beams that jut from the wall, with moving objects suspended from their armatures.[36]
While not denying Calder's power as a sculptor, an alternate view of the history of twentieth-century art[37] cites Calder's turning away in the early 1930s from his motor-powered works in favor of the wind-driven mobile as marking a decisive moment in Modernism's abandonment of its earlier commitment to themachine as a critical and potentially expressive new element in human affairs. According to this viewpoint, the mobile also marked an abandonment of Modernism's larger goal of a rapprochement with science and engineering, and with unfortunate long-term implications for contemporary art.
In 1934, Calder made his first outdoor works in hisRoxbury, Connecticut studio, using the same techniques and materials as his smaller works. Exhibited outside, Calder's initial standing mobiles moved elegantly in the breeze, bobbing and swirling in natural, spontaneous rhythms. The first few outdoor works were too delicate for strong winds, which forced Calder to rethink his fabrication process. By 1936 he changed his working methods and began to create smaller-scalemaquettes that he then enlarged to monumental size. The small maquette, the first step in the production of a monumental sculpture, was considered by Calder a sculpture in its own right. Larger works used the classic enlargement techniques of traditional sculptors, including his father and grandfather. Drawing his designs on craft paper, he enlarged them using a grid. His large-scale works were created according to his exact specifications, while also allowing him the liberty to adjust or correct a shape or line if necessary.[38]
In the 1950s, Calder concentrated more on producing monumental sculptures (hisagrandissements period), and public commissions increasingly came his way in the 1960s.[39] Notable examples are.125 (1957) forJFK Airport in New York,Spirale (1958) forUNESCO in Paris, andTrois disques, commissioned forExpo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Calder's largest sculpture, at 25.7 metres (84 ft) high, wasEl Sol Rojo, constructed outside theEstadio Azteca for the1968 Summer Olympics "Cultural Olympiad" events inMexico City. Many of hispublic art works were commissioned by renowned architects; for example,I.M. Pei commissionedLa Grande Voile, a 25-ton, 40-foot-high (12 m) stabile sculpture for theMassachusetts Institute of Technology in 1966.
Most of Calder's monumental stationary and mobile sculptures were made after 1962 at Etablissements Biémont inTours, France. He would create a model of his work, the engineering department would scale it up under Calder's direction, and technicians would complete the actual metalwork — all under Calder's watchful eye. Stabiles were made in steel plate, then painted. An exception wasTrois disques, instainless steel at 24 metres (79 ft) tall, commissioned byInternational Nickel Company of Canada.
In 1958, Calder askedJean Prouvé to construct the steel base ofSpirale in France, a monumental mobile for the UNESCO site in Paris, while the top was fabricated in Connecticut.
In June 1969, Calder attended the dedication of his monumental "stabile" sculptureLa Grande Vitesse inGrand Rapids, Michigan. This sculpture is notable for being the first civic sculpture in the United States to receive funding from theNational Endowment for the Arts.[40]
In 1971, Calder created hisBent Propeller which was installed at the entrance of theWorld Trade Center's North Tower in New York City. WhenBattery Park City opened, the sculpture was moved to Vesey and Church Streets.[41] The sculpture stood in front of7 World Trade Center until it was destroyed onSeptember 11, 2001.[42]In 1973, the 63-foot-tall (19 m) vermillion-colored public art sculptureFour Arches was installed on Bunker Hill, Los Angeles to serve as "a distinctive landmark".[43] The plaza site was designed in tiers to maximize the sculpture's visual effects.[44]
In 1974, Calder unveiled two sculptures,Flamingo at Federal Plaza andUniverse atSears Tower,[45] in Chicago, Illinois, accompanied by the exhibitionAlexander Calder: A Retrospective Exhibition, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago which opened simultaneously with the unveiling of the sculptures.[46]
Originally meant to be constructed in 1977 for the Hart Senate Office Building,Mountains and Clouds was not built until 1985 due to government budget cuts. The massive sheet-metal project, weighing 35 tons, spans the nine-story height of the building's atrium in Washington, D.C. Calder designed the maquette for the United States Senate in the last year of his life.[47]
Calder created stage sets for more than a dozen theatrical productions, includingNucléa,Horizon, and most notably,Martha Graham'sPanorama (1935), a production of theErik Satie symphonic dramaSocrate (1936), and later,Works in Progress (1968).Works in Progress was a "ballet" conceived by Calder himself and produced at theRome Opera House, featuring an array of mobiles, stabiles, and large painted backdrops. Calder would describe some of his stage sets as dancers performing a choreography due to their rhythmic movement.[48]
In addition to sculptures, Calder painted throughout his career, beginning in the early 1920s. He picked up his study of printmaking in 1925, and continued to produce illustrations for books and journals.[49] His projects from this period include pen-and-ink line drawings of animals for a 1931 publication ofAesop's fables. As Calder's sculpture moved into the realm of pure abstraction in the early 1930s, so did his prints. The thin lines used to define figures in the earlier prints and drawings began delineating groups of geometric shapes, often in motion. Calder also used prints for advocacy, as in poster prints from 1967 and 1969 protesting theVietnam War.[50]
As Calder's professional reputation expanded in the late 1940s and 1950s, so did his production of prints. Masses of lithographs based on his gouache paintings were marketed, and deluxe editions of plays, poems, and short stories illustrated with fine art prints by Calder became available.[49]
One of Calder's more unusual undertakings was a commission from Dallas-basedBraniff International Airways to paint a full-sizeDouglas DC-8-62 four-engined jet as a "flying canvas".George Stanley Gordon, founder of the New York City advertising agency Gordon and Shortt, approached Calder with the idea of painting a jet in 1972, but Calder responded that he did not paint toys. When Gordon told him it was a real, full-sized airliner he was proposing, the artist immediately gave his approval. Gordon felt that Braniff, known for melding the worlds of fashion and design with the world of aviation, would be the perfect company to carry out the idea. Braniff ChairmanHarding Lawrence was highly receptive and a contract was drawn up in 1973 calling for the painting of one Douglas DC-8-62 jet liner, dubbedFlying Colors, and 50 gouaches for a total price of $100,000.[51] Two years later, Braniff asked Calder to design a flagship for their fleet celebrating the U.S. Bicentennial. That piece, a Boeing 727-291 jet N408BN called theFlying Colors of the United States, and nicknamed the 'Sneaky Snake' by its pilots (based on quirky flight tendencies), featured a rippled image of red, white and blue echoing a waving American flag.[17] A third design, to be dubbedSalute to Mexico, was commissioned but went uncompleted following his death.[52]
In 1975 Calder was commissioned to paint aBMW 3.0 CSL automobile, which would be the first vehicle in theBMW Art Car Project.[53]
Calder created over 2,000 pieces of jewelry over the course of his career, many as gifts for friends. Several pieces reflect his fascination with art from Africa and other continents.[54] They were mostly made of brass and steel, with bits of ceramic, wood and glass. Calder rarely used solder; when he needed to join strips of metal, he linked them with loops, bound them with snippets of wire or fashioned rivets.[55] Calder created his first pieces in 1906 at the age of eight for his sister's dolls using copper wire that he found in the street.[54]
For his lifelong friendJoan Miró, Calder set a shard of a broken porcelain vessel in a brass ring.Peggy Guggenheim received enormous silver mobile earrings and later commissioned a hammered silver headboard that shimmered with dangling fish.[56] In 1942, Guggenheim wore one Calder earring and one byYves Tanguy to the opening of her New York gallery,The Art of This Century, to demonstrate her equal loyalty to Surrealist and abstract art, examples of which she displayed in separate galleries.[57] Others who were presented with Calder's pieces were the artist's close friend,Georgia O'Keeffe;Teeny Duchamp, wife ofMarcel Duchamp; Jeanne Rucar, wife of the filmmakerLuis Buñuel; andBella Rosenfeld, wife ofMarc Chagall.[58]
Calder's firstsolo exhibition was in 1927 at the Gallery of Jacques Seligmann in Paris.[59] His first solo show in a US commercial gallery was in 1928 at the Weyhe Gallery in New York City. He exhibited with the Abstraction-Création group in Paris in 1933.
In 1935, he had his first solo museum exhibition in the United States atThe Renaissance Society at theUniversity of Chicago. In New York, he was championed from the early 1930s by the Museum of Modern Art, and was one of three Americans to be included inAlfred H. Barr Jr.'s 1936 exhibitionCubism and Abstract Art.[60]
Calder's first retrospective was held in 1938 at George Walter Vincent Smith Gallery inSpringfield, Massachusetts. In 1943, the Museum of Modern Art hosted a Calder retrospective, curated byJames Johnson Sweeney andMarcel Duchamp; the show had to be extended due to the number of visitors.[34] Calder was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the3rd Sculpture International held at thePhiladelphia Museum of Art in the summer of 1949. His mobile,International Mobile was the centerpiece of the exhibition. Calder also participated indocumentas I (1955), II (1959), III (1964). Major retrospectives of his work were held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1964), the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France (1969), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1974). In addition, both of Calder's dealers, Galerie Maeght in Paris and the Perls Galleries in New York, averaged about one Calder show each per year.
In 2008, theMetropolitan Museum of Art exhibitedCalder Jewelry,[61] the first museum exhibit devoted solely to Calder's jewelry. The exhibit displayed a wide range of jewelry (bracelets, earrings and tiara) that Calder made as gifts for family and friends.
In 2024, theNational Gallery of Art displayedAlexander Calder: A Survey.[62]
Calder's work is in many permanent collections across the world. The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, has the largest body of work by Alexander Calder.[63] Other museum collections include the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; theMuseo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; theSeattle Art Museum; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.[64] There are two pieces on display in theGovernor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State Plaza Art Collection in Albany, NY.[65]
The Philadelphia Museum of Art offers a view of works by three generations of Alexander Calders. From the second floor window on the east side of the Great Stair Hall (on the opposite side from the armor collection) there is behind the viewer Calder's ownGhost mobile,[66] ahead on the street is theSwann Memorial Fountain by his father,A. Stirling Calder, and beyond that thestatue ofWilliam Penn atopCity Hall by Calder's grandfather,Alexander Milne Calder.
Calder Gardens is a 1.8-acre indoor-outdoor center dedicated to Calder featuring several of his works. Located on Philadelphia'sBenjamin Franklin Parkway, it opened on September 21, 2025.[67]Juana Berrío has been named as Senior Director of Programs.[68][69][70]
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Calder's works were not highly sought after, and when they sold, it was often for relatively little money. A copy of aPierre Matisse sales ledger in the foundation's files shows that only a few pieces in the 1941 show found buyers, one of whom,Solomon R. Guggenheim, paid only $233.34 (equivalent to $4,988 in 2024) for a work. The Museum of Modern Art had bought its first Calder in 1934 for $60, after talking Calder down from $100.[32] And yet by 1948 Calder nearly sold out an entire solo show in Rio de Janeiro, becoming the first internationally renowned sculptor.[83]Galerie Maeght in Paris became Calder's exclusive Parisian dealer in 1950 and for the rest of Calder's life. After his New York dealerCurt Valentin died unexpectedly in 1954, Calder selected thePerls Galleries in New York as his new American dealer, and this alliance lasted until Calder's death.[84]
In 2010, his metal mobileUntitled (Autumn Leaves), sold atSotheby's New York for $3.7 million. Another mobile brought $6.35 million atChristie's later that year.[85] Also at Christie's, a standing mobile calledLily of Force (1945), which was expected to sell for $8 to $12 million, was bought for $18.5 million in 2012.[86] Calder's 7.5-foot-long hanging mobilePoisson volant (Flying Fish) (1957) fetched $25.9 million, setting an auction record for the sculptor at Christie's New York in 2014.[87][88]
Beginning in 1966, winners of theNational Magazine Awards are awarded an "Ellie", a copper-colored stabile resembling an elephant, which was designed by Calder. Two months after his death, the artist was posthumously awarded thePresidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, by PresidentGerald Ford. However, representatives of the Calder family boycotted the January 10, 1977, ceremony "to make a statement favoring amnesty forVietnam Wardraft resisters".
In 1987, the Calder Foundation was established by Calder's family, "dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, preserving, and interpreting the art and archives of Alexander Calder and [is] charged with an unmatched collection of his works".[89] The foundation has large holdings, with some works owned by family members and others by foundation supporters. The art includes more than 600 sculptures including mobiles, stabiles, standing mobiles, and wire sculptures, and 22 monumental outdoor works, as well as thousands of oil paintings, works on paper, toys, pieces of jewelry, and domestic objects.[90]After having worked mainly on cataloging Calder's works, the Calder Foundation is now focusing on organizing global exhibitions for the artist.[91] One of Calder's grandsons, Alexander S. C. "Sandy" Rower, is the president of the foundation and other family members are on the board of trustees.[92]
The Calder Foundation does not authenticate artworks; rather, owners can submit their works for registration in the Foundation's archive and for examination.[93] The committee that performs examinations includes experts, scholars, museum curators, and members of the Calder family.[94] The Calder Foundation's website provides details on the current policies and guidelines governing examination procedures.[95]
In 1993, the owners ofRio Nero (1959), a sheet-metal and steel-wire mobile ostensibly by Calder, went to theUnited States District Court for the District of Columbia charging that it was not by Alexander Calder, as claimed by its seller.[96] That same year, a federal judge ruled that forRio Nero the burden of proof had not been fulfilled.[further explanation needed] Despite the decision, the owners of the mobile could not sell it because the recognized expert,Klaus Perls, had declared it a copy. The judge recognized the problem at the time, noting that Perls' pronouncement would makeRio Nero unsellable. In 1994, the Calder Foundation declined to include the mobile in thecatalogue raisonné on the artist.[97]
Referring to theRio Nero case, the Appellate Division of theNew York Supreme Court in 2009 rejected the appeal of an art collector who wished to sell a couple ofstage sets that Calder had designed but did not live to see completed, which had been unsuccessfully submitted to the Calder Foundation for authentication.[98] The court found that it did not have the power to declare the purported Calder work authentic, nor to order the Calder Foundation to include it in the catalogue raisonné.
In 1995, questions arose about another purported Calder,Two White Dots (not to be confused with the similarly named piece,Two White Dots in the Air, which Calder created in 1958). In 1973, Calder had created a 1-foot (0.30 m)-high sheet metalmaquette for an unrealized stabile he calledTwo White Dots. He gave this maquette to Carmen Segretario, founder and owner of the Segré Foundry ofWaterbury, Connecticut. For decades, Calder had utilized the services of Segré Foundry in manufacturing his mobiles and stabiles. Each piece (no matter how many copies were made) would be initialed personally by Calder in white chalk, after which a welder would follow the chalk marks to burn the initials into the work. Calder died in 1976, without a full-size version ofTwo White Dots having been made. In 1982, Segretario constructed a full-size version ofTwo White Dots, and sold it in 1983 to art dealer Shirley Teplitz for $70,000. Segetario's documentation claimed that the work had been fabricated around 1974 "under the supervision and direction of Artist".[99]Two White Dots was then sold at auction in May 1984 for $187,000.[100] Over the next decade, the piece was sold repeatedly. In 1995,Jon Shirley (the former president ofMicrosoft and a Calder collector) purchasedTwo White Dots for $1 million. When Shirley submitted the work to the Calder Foundation for inclusion in their catalogue raisonné, the Foundation contested the work's authenticity. TheAndré Emmerich Gallery refunded Shirley's money, and sued the Segré Foundry, which sought bankruptcy protection. The suit was settled out of court in the late 1990s.Two White Dots now resides outdoors on a farm near a river outside the small town ofWashington, Connecticut.[99]
In 2013 the Calder Estate filed a lawsuit against the estate of his former dealer,Klaus Perls, alleging that Perls had sold fake Calders as well as concealing the ownership of 679 works by the artist.[101] After a high-profile battle with much press coverage, the lawsuit was dismissed by Judge Shirley Werner Kornreich in theNew York State Supreme Court.[102]
Calder and his wife, Louisa, were the parents of two daughters, Sandra (1935–2022)[103] and Mary (1939–2011).[104] Mary's husband, Howard Rower (1939–2000), had been chairman of the board of the Alexander and Louisa Calder Foundation.[105] Mary and Howard's two sons are Alexander S. C. "Sandy" Rower (1963), president of the Calder Foundation,[106] and Holton Rower (1962), a vice president of the Foundation.[92] Alexander Rower established the Foundation in 1987 with the support of the Calder family. He has four children, including Gryphon Rower-Upjohn, a sound experimentalist, composer-performer, and curator in the field of audiovisual culture, who is also known as Gryphon Rue.[107][108]
Sandra Calder Davidson and her late husband, Jean Davidson, had a son, Shawn (1956), and a daughter, Andréa (1961).[109] Shawn and Andréa are vice presidents of the Calder Foundation.[92] Jean Davidson was the son of artistJo Davidson. Sandra was an illustrator of children's books. She caricatured her family and friends as animals in the 2013 bookThe Calder Family and Other Critters: Portraits and Reflections.[110]
The Calder family has a long-standing connection with thePutney School, a progressive co-ed boarding school in Vermont. Calder's daughters attended the school as did several of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.[111][112] Around 2007, the Rower family donated a standing mobile (a mobile that stands on its own fixed base) to Putney. A 13-foot mobile hangs in Calder Hall in the Michael S. Currier Center on campus.[108]
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