Pennsylvania, USA 1898-1976 New York, USA

(July 22, 1898, Lawnton, Pennsylvania — November 11, 1976, New York) He grew up on a ranch in Arizona and later in Pasadena. In the 1920s, he worked as a newspaper artist and as a designer for circus performances. From 1915 to 1919, he studied at the Stevens Institute of Technology, earning a degree in mechanical engineering. In 1922, in New York, he attended evening drawing courses, and in 1923 he studied at the Art Students League of New York. In 1926, he moved to Paris, where he enrolled at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. He socialized within circles of surrealists and constructivists. Around the same time, Calder discovered a new sculptural form — wire figures. These figures are drawings in space, endowed with humor and the mobility of marionettes; the flexible material from which they are made allows the figures’ poses to be easily changed. In 1927, he settled in Paris and became closely associated with avant-garde circles (Miró, Cocteau, Man Ray, Mondrian, Desnos, Léger, Le Corbusier, among others). In 1931, he joined the non-figurative group Abstraction-Création. Calder was deeply fascinated by the circus and created a miniature model of an arena filled with numerous circus performers — Calder’s Circus (1926–1930). The characters, made of soft materials, were set in motion using threads, wire, and rubber tubing, and the artist staged performances of this “toy” for his friends. During a visit to Mondrian’s studio in 1930, Calder discovered the potential of generalized modeling of the structures of the real world. Rejecting the inherent static nature of Mondrian’s Neoplasticism, he set himself the task of creating dynamic systems that would reflect the continuous variability of nature. Another stimulus for his transition to kinetic art came from impressions gained at a planetarium, where the movements of celestial bodies were demonstrated. From the early 1930s, Calder began creating abstract dynamic constructions known as mobiles. Early mobiles, sometimes quite close to Mondrian’s compositions, were set in motion by motors.