Alexander Calder was an American artist known for his mobiles and suspended sculptures that come to life in response to external forces. He was born on August 22, 1898 in Lawton, Pennsylvania, into an artistic family: his mother, Nanette Lederer Calder, was a painter; his father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was a sculptor; and his grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder.
Trained as an ironworker, Calder studied mechanical engineering before becoming interested in art in the 1920s and studying at the Art Students League in New York.
In 1926 Calder moved to Paris to continue his education and became familiar with the European avant-garde through Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp and Fernand Léger. That same year, Calder began his most famous piece: Cirque Calder, a miniature mechanical circus created to be used in front of an audience. Calder said of his interest in the circus, "I am passionate about spatial relationships... I have always been interested in everything that has to do with large space. His biomorphic forms are reminiscent of Joan Miró's surrealism with its curved lines and geometric shapes with rounded corners.
It was while admiring Piet Mondrian's colored squares in 1930, a true revelation for him, that he imagined them floating in space, making movement the main "material" of his work. He launched into geometric abstraction and created moving wire sculptures called "mobiles" by Marcel Duchamp. They break completely with the dense and imposing sculptures of the time, here it is the lightness which prevails. This is the beginning of kinetic art, even if for Alexander Calder the goal is not so much movement but the search for balance, symmetry, silence, lightness, subtlety ...
From 1933, Calder's success is felt, especially with the painting "The Fountain of Mercury" shown at the World Fair in 1937. In 1952, he received the Grand Prix of the Venice Biennale, in 1964 the Guggenheim honored his talent through a major retrospective, and his influence still resonates since in 2016, the Tate Modern has implemented a major retrospective on the mythical sculptor.
