Alexander Calder

Private Collection, New York (acquired circa 1985)

This work is a variation of an illustration for a poem titled "London Bridge Is Broken Down" in Alexander Calder’s Three Young Rats and Other Rhymes, published in New York by Curt Valentin in 1944 with James Johnson Sweeney (Ed.) who selected the verses. The book takes classic rhymes from Mother Goose and other sources and combines them with an adult interpretation by Calder who accompanies the poems with with 85 illustrations. Often with nudes, the illustrations transform the traditional interpretation of the rhymes while deepening and complexifying meanings. The actual drawing that was published appears on page 98.