ALEXANDER CALDER - PETITE SPIRALE - 1976

Subject: Graphic work from the second half of the 20th century. Lithograph - Alexander Calder.

Year: 1976.

Technique: Color lithograph. Limited edition of 75 copies (74/75). Signed in pencil in the lower right corner. Framed.

Measurements: 55'2 x 77'8 cm (without frame), 80 x 100 cm (with frame).

Alexander Calder (Philadelphia, United States, 1898 - New York, 1976) was an American sculptor known for being the inventor of the mobile (suspension kinetic sculptures) and a precursor of kinetic sculpture. He was born into a family of artists, but he was not initially inclined towards art and studied mechanical engineering, which later proved very useful to him.

Influenced by abstract artists such as Piet Mondrian, Jean Arp and Joan Miró, in 1931 he joined the Abstraction-Creation association, and the same year he created a work that Marcel Duchamp called a mobile. Mobiles are precisely the creations that elevated Calder to the highest peaks of modern sculpture. With them, he decided to create abstract works endowed with movement, which would reflect, thanks to their dynamism, the changing effects of light. He made mobiles of very different sizes, in which he used colored brass pieces of abstract shapes, joined by wires or ropes; Generally suspended from the ceiling, as a result of their light weight they were easily moved through the air.

With these works, he was the first to incorporate movement into artwork and became the precursor of kinetic art. The great success of mobile structures explains that the creator received commissions from the most diverse countries and that his works beautify some of the main cities in the world. He also made stabiles, large, dark-colored, non-movable sculptures that often reproduce monsters or strange animals. Referring to his motives, Alexander Calder once said that with them, he had tried to give life and movement to the works of Piet Mondrian, which he had the opportunity to see live and they had a huge impact on him.

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