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Lot Essay
This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A02103.
The Black Palette is an intimately scaled example of the kind of dynamic and ground breaking sculpture that propelled Alexander Calder to become known as one of the most innovative artists of his generation. Composed of six biomorphic-shaped elements, fashioned (consistent with Calder’s approach) from industrial materials, designed and worked by hand, the floating pieces are arranged hanging from slender red armatures. The vivid red base of the sculpture echoes the organic shapes of the floating elements, alongside the brightness of the pedestal’s red hue dynamically contrasting with the black and white opposing tonalities of the floating forms. This polychrome feature is a signature aspect of so much of Calder’s work and the artist carefully chose color combinations to create a powerfully asymmetrical, yet perfectly balanced tension in his mobiles, so evident in this untitled work from 1973.
The lines and contours of the present work trace “drawings” in the air, giving the appearance almost of fluid gestures made material and three dimensional, rendered in space. The red tracing of the mobile’s armatures link the chromatically and spatially-opposed black and white elements. The current work is Modernist and abstract, yet universal in its appeal. His works sometimes resonated with concepts found in Cubism, Constructivism, Surrealism, and other revolutionary movements, yet at the same time translated these many experimental and innovative approaches into his own personal, light and radical idiom. The standing mobile combined the solidity and stability of Calder’s stabile form with the dynamic, kinetic nature of his mobiles, their suspended elements poised in lively equilibrium in relation to each other.
Created during an enormously productive phase in his career during which Calder fashioned a diverse range of works, from monumental outdoor mobiles and stabiles, to more intimate works, such as the current example. Calder’s “total production at this time—representing sculptures in a range of scales and types—was…staggering, and it continued unabated until the end of his life. …When [he] was not busy traveling or creating new work during these last decades, he was receiving numerous awards or arranging one of his many exhibitions” (M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, Washington D.C., 1998. p. 280). With his mobiles, Calder changed the trajectory of the medium of sculpture—from a focus on works characterized by a heavy central mass toward new sculptural concepts that take flight and move through space. The present work is an example of what made Calder’s career so exceptional: an entirely new kind of sculptural concept whose overriding statement was that of motion.
The Black Palette is an intimately scaled example of the kind of dynamic and ground breaking sculpture that propelled Alexander Calder to become known as one of the most innovative artists of his generation. Composed of six biomorphic-shaped elements, fashioned (consistent with Calder’s approach) from industrial materials, designed and worked by hand, the floating pieces are arranged hanging from slender red armatures. The vivid red base of the sculpture echoes the organic shapes of the floating elements, alongside the brightness of the pedestal’s red hue dynamically contrasting with the black and white opposing tonalities of the floating forms. This polychrome feature is a signature aspect of so much of Calder’s work and the artist carefully chose color combinations to create a powerfully asymmetrical, yet perfectly balanced tension in his mobiles, so evident in this untitled work from 1973.
The lines and contours of the present work trace “drawings” in the air, giving the appearance almost of fluid gestures made material and three dimensional, rendered in space. The red tracing of the mobile’s armatures link the chromatically and spatially-opposed black and white elements. The current work is Modernist and abstract, yet universal in its appeal. His works sometimes resonated with concepts found in Cubism, Constructivism, Surrealism, and other revolutionary movements, yet at the same time translated these many experimental and innovative approaches into his own personal, light and radical idiom. The standing mobile combined the solidity and stability of Calder’s stabile form with the dynamic, kinetic nature of his mobiles, their suspended elements poised in lively equilibrium in relation to each other.
Created during an enormously productive phase in his career during which Calder fashioned a diverse range of works, from monumental outdoor mobiles and stabiles, to more intimate works, such as the current example. Calder’s “total production at this time—representing sculptures in a range of scales and types—was…staggering, and it continued unabated until the end of his life. …When [he] was not busy traveling or creating new work during these last decades, he was receiving numerous awards or arranging one of his many exhibitions” (M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, Washington D.C., 1998. p. 280). With his mobiles, Calder changed the trajectory of the medium of sculpture—from a focus on works characterized by a heavy central mass toward new sculptural concepts that take flight and move through space. The present work is an example of what made Calder’s career so exceptional: an entirely new kind of sculptural concept whose overriding statement was that of motion.