Alexander calder timeline biography short
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Who is Alexander Calder?
Calder, known to his friends as ‘Sandy’, invented the mobile in when he decided to create a drawing in the air!
The artist Marcel Duchamp called Calder’s sculptures’ ‘mobiles’ because they moved when the wind blew. Here is one of his mobiles made in How do you think it moves?
Calder’s mobiles were also inspired by nature, such as Snow Flurry I. Do you feel caught in a blustery snowstorm?
Calder was born in Pennsylvania, USA in into an artistic family, his grandfather, his father and his mother were all artists. However, as a kid he was great at Maths, so he decided to study engineering at university. This turned out to be very useful later on when he was inventing his kinetic sculptures. Kinetic is used to describe a type of art that moves, either by air or the use of a motor.
In Calder made a miniature circus out of wire and bits of cork and fabric. He called it the Cirque Calder, and artists like Pablo Picasso were invited to come and
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10 things to know about Alexander Calder
An introduction to the American great who made ‘drawings in space’ and changed our world with his invention of the mobile
Alexander Calder (), Blue Among Yellow and Red, Sheet metal, wire and paint. 42 x 60 in ( x cm). Estimate: $2,,,, Offered in 20th Century Evening Sale on 19 November at Christie’s in New York © Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The term ‘drawing in space’ was first used to describe Calder’s wire sculpture
It is commonly believed that artist Julio González coined the begrepp ‘drawing in space’ in , when he wrote about Pablo Picasso’s iron sculptures of , which Picasso had adapted from some of his earlier line drawings. Yet in in one of his first solo exhibitions, held at Galerie Billiet-Pierre Vorms in Paris, Alexander Calder had shown a number of his wire sculptures, which he had begun making in These were lighter and more ethe
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Summary of Alexander Calder
American artist Alexander Calder redefined sculpture by introducing the element of movement, first through performances of his Cirque Calder and later with motorized works and, finally, with hanging works called "mobiles." In addition to his abstract mobiles, Calder also created static sculptures, called "stabiles," as well as paintings, jewelry, theater sets, and costumes.
Accomplishments
- Many artists made contour line drawings on paper, but Calder was the first to use wire to create three-dimensional line "drawings" of people, animals, and objects. These "drawings in space" introduced line into sculpture as an element unto itself.
- Calder shifted from figurative linear sculptures in wire to nonobjective forms in motion by creating the first mobiles. Composed of pivoting lengths of wire counterbalanced with thin metal elements, the appearance of the entire piece was randomly arranged and rearranged in space by chance simply by the air moving the