Alexander Calder

Perls Galleries, New York
Felix Landau Gallery, Los Angeles (acquired from the above in 1965)
Robert Haiff, Beverly Hills
Margot Levin Gallery, Los Angeles (acquired from the above in 1975)
Louis M. Kaplan Associates, London (acquired from the above in 1975)
Solomon & Co., New York (acquired from the above in 1976)
Frances and Norman Lear, California (acquired from the above in 1979)
Private Collection, USA
Thence by descent to the present owner 

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are minor scattered losses and rub marks to the main elements and connecting wires which appear to be a result of the mobile's kinetic nature. Inspection under ultraviolet light reveals a small area of fluorescence on the large red element.
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"Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculpted or painted, an entirely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. It would be perfect but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion."

The artist cited in: 'Objects to Art Being Static, So He Keeps it in Motion', New York World-Telegram, 11 June 1932.


Projecting elegant metal tendrils gracefully punctuated by geometric and delicately branching armatures, Alexander Calder's magnificent Little Red confers a seemingly weightless, stunning spatial equilibrium. Articulated in a balletic schema of angular polygonal shapes of red, blue and yellow, the present work is a resolute manifestation of Calder's instinctual mastery of formal balance and lyrical movement. Executed in 1967 at the height of Alexander Calder's mature practice, Little Red embodies Calder’s exceptional sculptural dexterity and the uniqueness of his suspended forms, ever moving in a sublime metallic ballet of organic and mutable composition.

With extraordinary ingenuity and adroit technical skill, Calder forged a revolutionary genre of sculpture that made subjects of form and movement themselves. By traversing the boundaries of artistic precedent Calder's pioneering work demanded a new descriptive lexicon. As early as 1932 Marcel Duchamp gave consummate expression to Calder's mechanised wire works by bestowing the now famous appellation 'mobile' to their delicate hanging forms. Based in Paris throughout the 1930s, Calder closely associated with the eminent avant-garde and bore witness to the radical creative development emanating from the contemporaneous artistic milieu. Indeed, the progression of Calder's work into the realm of the abstract can be traced to a pivotally influential visit to Piet Mondrian's studio in 1930. Famously Spartan, the nearly all-white environment comprised numerous coloured squares affixed to the walls - this created an atmospheric effect in which the squares seemed to float in relation to one another. Calder's immediate reaction was a desire to see these chromatic components move; as the artist later explained: "I was particularly impressed by some rectangles of colour he had tacked on his wall in a pattern after his nature. I told him I would like to make them oscillate - he objected" (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, Cologne, Galerie Linssen, Calder 1898-1976 Retrospective, 1987, p. 48). This moment of realisation prompted Calder's life-long inquiry into the play of movement through his iconic body of abstract constellations.

Calder's work liberated sculpture from the constraints of the pedestal. In allowing a new transformative experience of a once static medium, Calder's delicate sheet-metal and wire constructions invoke the play of shadows affected by the fluid and autonomous movement of the mobile's component parts. Anchored to a network of sloping armatures, the floating red, yellow and blue elements together engender unpredictable contortions and resolutions of alternating balance as they continually move and intertwine. Inspired by elemental forms derived from the natural world, Calder also invites and isolates the forces of nature as determining factors in his sculptural creations: "You see nature and then you try to emulate it. ... The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle. I represent them by discs and then I vary them. My whole theory about art is the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement. Even my triangles are spheres, but they are spheres of a different shape" (the artist cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, O'Hara Gallery, Alexander Calder: Selected Works 1932-1972, 1994, p. 3).

Standing as feats of Calder's fertile mind and his extraordinary affinity for engineering, the mobiles present Calder at his most technically adept and conceptually inventive. Indeed, executed at the very height of Calder's creative and technical powers, Little Red is a mature work in the most desirable and captivating format: the mobile. The diversity of balance and axis in this complex aerial position exudes subtle cadence and masterful dexterity of forms that are utterly unique to Calder's canon of suspended assemblages.