Alexander Calder

ALEXANDER CALDER (United States, 1898 - 1976).
"Gaspar Hall, 1975.
Lithograph on paper. Exemplar H.C.
Signed and justified by hand.
Work published in the catalog raisonné of the artist's graphic work.
Measurements: 65 x 50 cm.

Being the son of a painter and sculptor, Calder did not move towards the world of art until adulthood. After studying engineering, he moved to New York in 1923, where he began his artistic production and joined the Art Students League. During the 1920s he worked as an illustrator for the press and held his first painting exhibition in 1926 at The Artist's Gallery in New York. Before the end of the year he began his trip to Europe, which allowed him to meet the great figures of the time, such as Miró, Duchamp and Mondrian. The work of the latter had the most decisive influence on him, prompting him to join the Abstraction-Creation group, whose aim was to promote a non-objective art. During the following years he worked between Paris and New York, and exhibited regularly in both cities. In 1931 he made his first mobile, a sculpture that, in his own words, tried to give movement to Mondrian's work. A year earlier he had participated for the first time in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. During World War II Calder reached his artistic maturity, creating works that made him famous throughout the world, with which he demonstrated that he was able to synthesize and sublimate the theories of the avant-garde artists of the beginning of the century. His works achieved an enthusiastic popular acceptance rarely achieved by abstract art. Calder is one of the most recognized artists of the 20th century, with work in every major collection in the world. From MoMA in New York, where one of his sculptures decorates the main staircase, to UNESCO headquarters in Paris.