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Lot Essay
These works are registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application numbers A15317 and A15318 respectively.
Created in 1949, Alexander Calder’s Spring is a distillation of the artist’s most cherished attributes, a delightful standing mobile whose lilting, harmonious forms enchant the viewer by nature of their magical suspension. By this point in his career, the cleverness and ingenuity of Calder’s designs seemed to rush out in a cascade of magical and elegant forms. During World War II, the artist was limited to found materials and colored glass or carved wood due to the shortage of metal. Once the war had ended, sheet metal became more plentiful and as a result, the abundant works produced during this era are prolific and inventive. In Spring, the upward rush of momentum that Calder creates is akin to the ascension of notes in a musical scale, or the stem of a newly-sprouted seedling as it reaches toward the sun. Indeed, Calder’s clever title—“Spring”— proved to be a recurring theme in his work, appearing as early as 1928 in a wire sculpture of the same name, in the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The allegorical qualities of the word must have appealed to the artist, who throughout his career took inspiration from the flowering forms of the season. The delightful Spring perfectly evokes Calder’s own sentiment: “it’s no more than a series of flat objects that move. To a few, though, it may be poetry” (A. Calder, quoted in S. Rodman, Conversations with Artists, New York, 1957, p. 142).
The year in which Calder’s Spring was created was an important one for the artist, in which he traveled widely, taking part in exhibitions around the globe. In 1943, Calder was lauded with a large retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and another successful exhibition at the Galerie Louis Carré in Paris followed in 1946. By 1948, Calder’s reputation as a major international artist was solidified. Eager to present his work in Europe and Latin America after the close of the Second World War, Calder embarked upon a major tour, traveling to Mexico City, Panama, Trinidad and Brazil, where he presented two successful exhibitions in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. During this year alone, Calder produced the wonderfully lyrical Finny Fish made of delicate pieces of colored glass, now in the National Gallery of Art and Snow Flurry I, the beautiful cascading mobile of delicate white discs in the Museum of Modern Art, along with countless other sculptures for exhibitions around the world. Indeed, the technically-nimble sculptures that Calder executed during this era display a remarkable sense of balance and counter-balance, revealing a mature artist who delighted in the challenges that each new work proposed.
In Spring, a series of blade-like forms are arranged along a thin black wire that’s balanced upon the tip of a lyrical red base. Seen from a distance, the forms appear to float in thin air, like weightless objects locked in a magical orbit by some invisible force. A delicate yellow ring surrounds the piece, hovering in suspension, evoking the planetary rings of Saturn or the hoop of a circus ringmaster. Indeed the dynamic anthropomorphic quality of Calder’s delicate red base is reminiscent of a performing seal that balances an object upon its nose. As ever, the capricious charm of Calder’s work belies the complicated system of balance and counter-balance required to pull off such a feat. Much like a magician’s trick, Calder seems to trump the laws of gravity, never revealing his sleight of hand.
Indeed, by this point in his career, Calder possessed a comfort and ease with the materials he used, and he usually worked directly with his chosen material, saying: “I start by cutting out a lot of shapes. Next, I file them and smooth them off. Some I keep because they’re pleasing or dynamic. Some are bits I just happen to find. Then I arrange them, like papier collé, on a table, and ‘paint’ them—that is, arrange them, with wires between the pieces if it’s to be a mobile, for the overall pattern” (A. Calder, quoted in S. Rodman, ibid., p. 140). Dividing his time between Roxbury, Connecticut and countless trips abroad, Calder worked with unflagging enthusiasm. The nearly ceaseless output of this era reveals a mature artist who had hit his stride.
In Spring, an animated, anthropomorphic quality enlivens the red support, whose three legs are rendered with a delicacy and grace that sends the momentum of the piece ever skyward. The secondary meaning of Calder’s title comes to life, then, as one imagines the pent-up energy contained within a tightly-coiled spring, and the upward burst of momentum it receives upon its release. This spirited bit of wordplay must have appealed to the artist, whose sense of humor and cunning wit was well known.
A charming evocation of Calder’s skill, Spring is a delightful standing mobile that combines the magical suspension of the artist’s mobiles with the stability and balance of the stabiles. The result is rendered in Calder’s signature palette of red, black and yellow and evokes the pronouncement that Calder made in 1943, “To me the most important thing in composition is disparity” (A. Calder, “A Propos of Measuring a Mobile,” Manuscript, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1943).
Created in 1949, Alexander Calder’s Spring is a distillation of the artist’s most cherished attributes, a delightful standing mobile whose lilting, harmonious forms enchant the viewer by nature of their magical suspension. By this point in his career, the cleverness and ingenuity of Calder’s designs seemed to rush out in a cascade of magical and elegant forms. During World War II, the artist was limited to found materials and colored glass or carved wood due to the shortage of metal. Once the war had ended, sheet metal became more plentiful and as a result, the abundant works produced during this era are prolific and inventive. In Spring, the upward rush of momentum that Calder creates is akin to the ascension of notes in a musical scale, or the stem of a newly-sprouted seedling as it reaches toward the sun. Indeed, Calder’s clever title—“Spring”— proved to be a recurring theme in his work, appearing as early as 1928 in a wire sculpture of the same name, in the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The allegorical qualities of the word must have appealed to the artist, who throughout his career took inspiration from the flowering forms of the season. The delightful Spring perfectly evokes Calder’s own sentiment: “it’s no more than a series of flat objects that move. To a few, though, it may be poetry” (A. Calder, quoted in S. Rodman, Conversations with Artists, New York, 1957, p. 142).
The year in which Calder’s Spring was created was an important one for the artist, in which he traveled widely, taking part in exhibitions around the globe. In 1943, Calder was lauded with a large retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and another successful exhibition at the Galerie Louis Carré in Paris followed in 1946. By 1948, Calder’s reputation as a major international artist was solidified. Eager to present his work in Europe and Latin America after the close of the Second World War, Calder embarked upon a major tour, traveling to Mexico City, Panama, Trinidad and Brazil, where he presented two successful exhibitions in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. During this year alone, Calder produced the wonderfully lyrical Finny Fish made of delicate pieces of colored glass, now in the National Gallery of Art and Snow Flurry I, the beautiful cascading mobile of delicate white discs in the Museum of Modern Art, along with countless other sculptures for exhibitions around the world. Indeed, the technically-nimble sculptures that Calder executed during this era display a remarkable sense of balance and counter-balance, revealing a mature artist who delighted in the challenges that each new work proposed.
In Spring, a series of blade-like forms are arranged along a thin black wire that’s balanced upon the tip of a lyrical red base. Seen from a distance, the forms appear to float in thin air, like weightless objects locked in a magical orbit by some invisible force. A delicate yellow ring surrounds the piece, hovering in suspension, evoking the planetary rings of Saturn or the hoop of a circus ringmaster. Indeed the dynamic anthropomorphic quality of Calder’s delicate red base is reminiscent of a performing seal that balances an object upon its nose. As ever, the capricious charm of Calder’s work belies the complicated system of balance and counter-balance required to pull off such a feat. Much like a magician’s trick, Calder seems to trump the laws of gravity, never revealing his sleight of hand.
Indeed, by this point in his career, Calder possessed a comfort and ease with the materials he used, and he usually worked directly with his chosen material, saying: “I start by cutting out a lot of shapes. Next, I file them and smooth them off. Some I keep because they’re pleasing or dynamic. Some are bits I just happen to find. Then I arrange them, like papier collé, on a table, and ‘paint’ them—that is, arrange them, with wires between the pieces if it’s to be a mobile, for the overall pattern” (A. Calder, quoted in S. Rodman, ibid., p. 140). Dividing his time between Roxbury, Connecticut and countless trips abroad, Calder worked with unflagging enthusiasm. The nearly ceaseless output of this era reveals a mature artist who had hit his stride.
In Spring, an animated, anthropomorphic quality enlivens the red support, whose three legs are rendered with a delicacy and grace that sends the momentum of the piece ever skyward. The secondary meaning of Calder’s title comes to life, then, as one imagines the pent-up energy contained within a tightly-coiled spring, and the upward burst of momentum it receives upon its release. This spirited bit of wordplay must have appealed to the artist, whose sense of humor and cunning wit was well known.
A charming evocation of Calder’s skill, Spring is a delightful standing mobile that combines the magical suspension of the artist’s mobiles with the stability and balance of the stabiles. The result is rendered in Calder’s signature palette of red, black and yellow and evokes the pronouncement that Calder made in 1943, “To me the most important thing in composition is disparity” (A. Calder, “A Propos of Measuring a Mobile,” Manuscript, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1943).