Alexander Calder

Perls Galleries, New York

Annette Mark, New York (acquired from the above circa 1959)

PaceWildenstein, New York (acquired from the above in 2004)

Russeck Gallery, Palm Beach (acquired from the above in 2004)

John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco (acquired from the above in 2006)

Acquired from the above in May 2006 by the present owner

The intimately scaled Four White on Little Red exhibits the exacting equilibrium and distinct aesthetic harmony that defines Alexander Calder’s large-scale standing mobiles. Executed in 1959, the present work represents a distillation of the artist’s formal innovations during one of the most transformative decades of his career. During the 1950s, Calder achieved widespread international acclaim and established a new more expansive, studio in Saché, France, where the larger space afforded him a renewed sense inspiration. Here, four stark white discs of varying sizes balance delicately on individual axes, extended from an elegant brass spiral incised with the artist’s monogram and anchored atop a vivid, three-pronged, crimson base. With characteristic grace, Four White on Little Red reveals Calder’s intuitive ability to transform simple geometric forms into exuberant visual poetry.

In 1930, following a visit to Piet Mondrian’s studio, Alexander Calder—struck by the artist’s interrogation of environment and space—made his first entirely abstract compositions and soon after created the first mobile. The triangular crimson base of the present work conveys an impression of grounded permanence; despite its modest scale, as the title suggests, this “little red” foundation becomes a defiant earthly anchorage for its fully airborne mobile counterparts. In contrast, the composition’s suspended white discs are kinetic, their gentle oscillation animating the space around them. One soon notes that the discs vary slightly in size, the largest one placed more earthbound, while the smallest rises highest in the air. Deceptively simple in form yet masterful in its ingenious structural composition, Four White on Little Red achieves a mesmeric sense of balance. Calder himself articulated the duality behind his two major sculptural achievements: “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, p. 42). Four White on Little Red, a standing mobile, unites these two modes—employing a stable structure to support kinetic elements, and thus inhabiting space with presence and possibility.

Here, color and form coalesce, embodying Calder’s career-long investigation into space and abstraction. Attesting to the importance of red in his oeuvre, Calder once said, “It’s really just for differentiation, but I love red so much that I almost want to paint everything red” (Alexander Calder and Katharine Kuh, “Alexander Calder,” The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists, New York, 1962, p. 41). The red base, splayed in elegant bifurcation, appears almost animated and poised as if ready to stride forward, while the hovering discs above sway in serene counterpoint. The lively, glistening spiral is iconically Calder; here, rendered boldly in brass, its curving line mimics movement unfolding in a wry nod to the actual fluctuations of delicate white discs that it obligingly holds. Through its synthesis of geometric and organic, kinetic and static form, Four White on Little Red epitomizes Calder’s innovative integration of color, movement, and immateriality, which gave new life to the medium of sculpture in the mid-twentieth century, transforming a tradition that had remained static for millennia and securing his place among the most influential of contemporary artists.