Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street
212-708-9400
New York
The Estée and Joseph H. Lauder Gallery, fifth floor
Focus: Alexander Calder
September 14–February 18, 2008

This single gallery installation, drawn from MoMA’s extensive collection of Alexander Calder’s art, focuses on early wire sculptures and mobiles created between the late 1920s and the late 1940s, prior to the artist’s shift to monumental constructions and public works. The works reveal the artist’s early interest in kinetic art and his ability to create a vital, three-dimensional world that moved beyond fixed, static forms.

The installation underscores the visual sophistication and inventiveness of Calder’s approach to making art, which quietly revolutionized ideas about what modern sculpture could be. Organized by Anne Umland, Curator, with Veronica Roberts, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art.

Calder (July 22, 1898-November 11, 1976), also known as Sandy Calder, was most famous for inventing the mobile. In addition to mobile and stabile sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys and tapestry and designed carpets.

Born in Lawnton, Pennsylvania, on July 22, 1898, Calder came from a family of artists. His father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was a well-known sculptor who created many public installations, a majority of them located in Philadelphia. Calder’s grandfather, sculptor Alexander Milne Calder, was born in Scotland and immigrated to Philadelphia in 1868. Calder’s mother, Nanette Lederer Calder, was a professional portrait painter who studied at the Académie Julian and the Sorbonne in Paris from around 1888 until 1893. She then moved to Philadelphia where she met Alexander Stirling Calder while studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.