Alexander Calder "The Paris Years, 1926-1933"
The Whitney Museum of American Art
This event has ended.
When Alexander Calder (1898-1976) arrived in Paris in the mid-1920s, he aspired to be a painter; when he left in the early-1930s, he had evolved into the artist we know today, an international figure and a defining force in 20th-century sculpture. Focusing on Calder's extraordinarily important "Paris Years," 1926-1933, and, specifically, on his wire sculptures of this formative
period, this exhibition begins with Calder's earliest mobilizing of articulated figures for toys. From there it takes us to the extended cast of his animated Circus (made in Paris 1926-1931), to independent figurative sculptures and abstract motorized works, and finally to Calder's releasing his line into buoyant abstract airborne gesture for his paradigm-shifting mobiles, works that not only freed sculpture from mass but also incorporated movement as a 'material' itself.
Media
Schedule
from October 16, 2008 to February 15, 2009