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Alexander Calder: Father of the Mobile

© Jennifer Hollowell

"When everything goes right, a mobile is a piece of poetry that dances with the joy of life and surprises." - Alexander Calder, early 1930's

Alexander Calder's family, founders of the Calder Foundation in New York City, asked several websites on the Internet to remove all images from their sites because they are building http://www.calder.org. So, it has been quite a challenge finding biographical information and images to view by this specific artist. If you have any questions or comments about this artist, you may contact them at the following address:

Calder Foundation
40 Wooster Street, 5th FL
New York, NY 10013

He was born July 22, 1898 in Lawton, Pennsylvania and his first solo exhibition was in 1926 at the Arts Gallery in New York. He established himself as one of the few artists to have created an entirely new art form: mobiles (invented 1930). In his mobiles, Alexander Calder made engineering a playful pursuit with delightful miniatures of circus figures and satirical portraits. In 1931 he moved to Paris to work exclusively on his mobiles and eventually gained worldwide recognition for them. His stay in Paris was not long, for in 1933 he found himself back in the United States making a home in Roxbury Connecticut.

"A mobile is a very modest thing." - Alexander Calder

Calder is also the creator of the stabile, a large-scale abstract construction used for grand displays in stark public places in many cities. He enjoyed creating thousands of different pieces of art using many different mediums such as:

· Games
· Jewelry
· Drawings
· Movie sets
· Mobiles, of course
· Toys
· Costumes
· Sculptures
· Paintings

"I love red so much that I almost want to paint everything red." - Alexander Calder

Some of his other accomplishments include moving to Sache, France in 1954 to continue his work, publishing his autobiography in 1966 (Something I would love to get my hands on!), and receiving the United Nations Peace Medal in 1975. By the time he died (November 11, 1976) he was married (to a woman named Louisa) and fathered two children. All who knew him called him "Sandy," but I was unable to find the origin of this nickname. Both his father and his grandfather were sculptors, so it is no wonder his family created their foundation in recognition of all this talent.

I found out about this artist when I received information about the Detroit Institute of Graphic Artists' past and present exhibits. I wish I could have seen examples of his paintings and drawings, but they should be viewable soon at http://www.calder.org. Some examples of his mobiles and stabiles can still be found at http://www.altavista.com, but I am not certain for how long.

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