Untitled, 1963

Alexander CALDER
1898-1976

1963
gouache and watercolor on paper
29 1/2 x 21 1/2 inches
signed and dated lower right

Provenance:
Studio of the artist
Nicholas Guppy, London 1963
Obelisk Gallery, Boston
Anderson Collection, California
Le Musee Imaginaire, Inc. Texas
Private Collection, New York

This work is registered with the Calder Foundation under the application number A14152

Alexander CALDER (1898-1976)
Alexander Calder, whose illustrious career spanned much of the 20th century, is among the most acclaimed and influential sculptors of our time. Born in a family of celebrated, though more classically trained artists, Calder utilized his innovative genius to profoundly change the course of modern art. He began by developing a new method of sculpting: by bending and twisting wire, he essentially "drew" three-dimensional figures in space. He is renowned for the invention of the mobile, whose suspended, abstract elements move and balance in changing harmony. Calder also devoted himself to making outdoor sculpture on a grand scale from bolted sheet steel. Today, these stately titans grace public plazas in cities throughout the world.

Alexander Calder developed a passion for gouaches early in his career, appreciating the ease at which he could work with this medium while combining his love for drawing and eye for color. Seemingly simple and often abstract in nature, Calder’s gouaches reveal a mastery of line, solid balance of composition and predilection for primary colors, all of which translated into vibrant and pulsating works of art.

As the range and breadth of his various projects and commissions indicate, Calder's artistic talents were renowned worldwide by the 1960s. A retrospective of his work opened at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1964. Five years later the Fondation Maeght, in Saint-Paul-de-Venice, France, held its own Calder retrospective. In 1966, Calder, together with his son-in-law Jean Davidson, published a well-received autobiography. Additionally, both of Calder's dealers, Galerie Maeght in Paris and the Perls Gallery in New York averaged about one Calder show each per year.
?Calder was prolific and worked throughout his career in many art forms. He produced drawings, oil paintings, watercolors, etchings, gouache and serigraphy. He also designed jewelry, tapestry, theatre settings and architectural interiors. In 1976, he attended the opening of yet another retrospective of his work, Calder's Universe, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Just a few weeks later, Calder died at the age of seventy-eight, ending the most prolific and innovative artistic career of the twentieth century.