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Sunday, March 7, 2021

Paris, at Alexander Calder Exhibition

 

I didn’t know about Alexander Calder till I saw his exhibition at Musée Picasso in Paris, his art works were displayed together with Picasso’s works. Alexander Calder is known for inventing wire sculptures and the mobile, a type of kinetic art which relied on careful weighting to achieve balance and suspension in the air. He didn't limit his art to sculptures; he also created paintings, jewelry, theatre sets and costumes. 

An important Alexander Calder work is the monumental "Floating Clouds" (1952-1953) of the Aula Magna (Central University of Venezuela) of the University City of Caracas in Venezuela. This work is a Unesco World Heritage Site. Calder's clouds were specially designed to combine art and technology, making the auditorium one of the top 5 university auditoriums in the world by sound quality.


Photo: Wikimedia

While residing in France between 1926 and 1933, he cleverly constructed three-dimensional art works  using wires which give impression of  ‘drawings in space’, he turned out charming representations of birds, cows, elephants, horses, and other animals, including the extraordinary Romulus and Remus of 1928 that depicts the mythical founders of Rome being nursed by a she-wolf.  

 He also created intricate tableaus of circus performers, but Alexander Calder particularly recommended himself with his sensational full-body portraits of jazz-era dancer Josephine Baker and bust portraits of many in his Parisian artistic circle, such as Miró, composer Edgard Varèse, and socialite Kiki de Montparnasse. 


                                                                                Photo: Wikimedia

With seemingly inexhaustible energy, Alexander Calder expanded the repertoire of forms in his mobiles from spheres to discs to organic shapes adapted from plants and animals. The World War II years saw shortages of sheet metal, and Calder turned toward bits of wood, shards of glass and ceramics, tin cans, and other refuse he found on his Roxbury property, creating a series dubbed Constellations and some of his most-beloved works, including Finny Fish, 1948.

 

THE END

 Source:  Wikipedia