Alexander Calder

Galerie Maeght, Paris
Weintraub Gallery, New York (acquired from the above in 1968)
Gladys and Selig Burrows, New York (acquired from the above in 1971)
By descent to the present owner from the above

This work is in very good and sound condition overall. There are inconsistencies in the paint application inherent to the artist's working method. There are a few very minor pinpoint spot accretions visible upon close inspection.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

"Sculpture suggests movement, painting depth or light. Calder suggests nothing; he captures and embellishes true, living movements.” Jean-Paul Sartre, “Les Mobiles de Calder," Alexander Calder: Mobiles, Stabiles, Constellations, 1946, p. 9

 

One of the most significant artistic innovators of the 20th Century, Alexander Calder reshaped the preconceived laws of sculptural art by inviting his forms to move freely through the spaces they inhabit. Transforming the traditional notions of three-dimensional art by establishing an unprecedented alliance of balance, movement and color, he is celebrated today as one of the most ground-breaking artists of the modern era.

Of Calder’s famed kinetic sculptures, his delicate standing mobiles, such as Le Corset Bleu, demonstrate a pinnacle of both conceptual and physical complexity. As Calder once described his differing bodies of work, "the mobile has actual movement in itself, while the stabile is back at the old painting idea of implied movement" (Alexander Calder and Katharine Kuh, "Alexander Calder," The Artist's Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists, New York, 1962). Here, the standing mobile spans both these worlds as it employs a stabile structure to support mobile arms and thus it resides in a liminal realm of potential energy and possibility. The work is at once active but stationary, both enigmatic yet absolute. Exquisitely illustrating these ideals, Le Corset Bleu commands its viewers to gaze, mesmerized, as an assembly of enchanting white disks dances effortlessly around the sculpture’s geometric central architecture which anchors the work soundly on its tripod base. While entirely abstract in form, Le Corset Bleu evokes the suggestion of a perhaps scandalous yet entirely elegant lady. Standing boldly upright in her blue corset, with a trio of legs spread confidently, our electrifying red figure captivates and entices the viewer to explore her complex contours and three-dimensionality. With its inherent sensitivity, Calder’s sculpture assumes a heightened intimacy as it responds physically to every gesture and breath of the viewer.  All the while, serene white forms float playfully around this sharp and intensely geometric form, lending a graceful balance which renders the sculpture complete. 

Possessing a phenomenal aptitude and ambition to create, it could be said of Calder that artistic inclinations were in his very blood. Calder was born into a family of artists–his father and grandfather both renowned sculptors and his mother a painter–but he was not necessarily one to closely follow his family’s traditions. At age 17, Calder enrolled in a mechanical engineering program. However, his innate artistic talent and unwavering creative impulses finally prevailed and four years after graduating from the Stevens Institute of Technology he realized that his true calling was in art. These years of training were certainly not wasted as Calder continuously drew from this background in engineering and invented creative applications for this specific set of knowledge within his artistic practice.

It was not only with his vocational training that Alexander Calder rebelled against family tradition. Artistically, Calder’s output was also a dramatic departure from what the generations before him had produced. A fascinating display of sculptures by these three Calders is viewable from the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the artist’s home state of Pennsylvania. There, one can simultaneously see monumental works created by all three generations displayed along the city’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway. In clear contrast to Alexander Milne Calder’s statue of William Penn which stands proudly atop the City Hall building and Alexander Stirling Calder’s stately Beux-Arts Swann Memorial Fountain further along the Parkway, the youngest Alexander Calder’s monumental mobile, Ghost, 1964, hangs with an effortless delicate grace within the museum’s Great Stair Hall Balcony. Typical of this third-generation artist, with works like Ghost and Le Corset Bleu, we see a radical break from the predominant sculptural traditions of his forefathers. Inspired by his avant-garde contemporaries including Joan Miró, Jean Arp and Marcel Duchamp, for Calder, sculptures were no longer mandatorily weighty and static but instead they became intricately engineered to maintain a fluid elegance and buoyancy. 

Brilliantly vibrant in hue and abstractly anthropomorphic in form, Calder’s oeuvre has often been likened to the equally dynamic works of his life-long friend and fellow artist Joan Miró. Having met in 1928, both artists celebrated color, line and form, exploring the possibilities of these most essential fundamentals of artistic production. Furthermore, Calder’s vivid constructions command an array of further references and are often considered sculptural translations of the abstract forms of Modernist painters, such as Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich.

In 1931, Calder experienced a crucial creative epiphany when visiting the studio of Piet Mondrian where Calder realized the creative potential of applying geometric and biomorphic abstraction to sculptural constructions. As the artist recalled years later: "I was very much moved by Mondrian’s studio, large, beautiful and irregular in shape as it was, with the walls painted white and divided by black lines and rectangles of bright color, like his paintings. It was very lovely, with a cross-light (there were windows on both sides), and I thought at the time how fine it would be if everything there moved; though Mondrian himself did not approve of this idea at all. I went home and tried to paint. But wire, or something to twist, or tear, or bend, is an easier medium for me to think in." (Myfanwy Evans, The Painter's Object, London, 1937, p. 62).

The liberation of pictorial form and color into the third dimension of real space so that they become free to move is Calder’s major innovation and gift to art history. The freedom of movement opened the work up to the external world and increased the level of interaction between the artwork, architecture, and, more importantly, the viewer. Calder’s unique ability was to create works of exquisitely balanced composition which retain their playful humor, formalist elements, and harmony when moved by the merest breath of wind. The striking colored elements are anchored together using a series of exceptional mechanisms that allow them to move independently of each other yet retaining a formal unity that ensures that none of the elements dominate or touch each other. While the mobile's shapes recall planetary, natural and biomorphic forms, the work is unfettered by any direct notion of representation. Instead, it interacts with its environment, participating actively in the universe.