Alexander Calder
Born: Philadelphia, USA 1898.
Died: New York City, USA 1976.
Alexander Calder developed the mobile as a three-dimensional Kinetic art form, having appropriated the idea from Russian constructivist Alexander Rodchenko. Calder originally trained as an engineer before studying at the Art students League in New York City, where he specialized in making sculptures from welded metal. He spent time in Europe from 1926, being impressed by the formal qualities and tonal implications of Mondrian's work, which elegantly combines elements of Abstraction, surrealism and constructivism. He joined the abstraction-creation group in 1931 and held his first exhibition of "mobiles" a name suggested by Duchamp, in 1932. Calder was also producing static, sculptural constructions or "stabiles", as entitled by Jean Arp. The mobiles that followed were wind-driven, an advance that Calder preferred to the earlier motorized or hand-driven pieces. The Black Eye is a classic piece, made during a period when Calder's stabiles had reached monumental proportions as public works of art.
Masterpieces:
The black eye
Antennae with red and blue dots.
Performing seal.
text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.
Images: google images.