Alexander Calder

Alexander Calder is an American artist known for his mobiles and suspended sculptures who come alive in response to external forces. & Nbsp; born August 22, 1898 in Lawton in Pennsylvania in an artist's family: her mother, Nanette Lederer Calder, is a painter & nbsp ;; His father, & nbsp; Alexander Stirling Calder, is a sculptor, as well as his grandfather & nbsp; Alexander Milne Calder. Fans of training, Calder studies mechanical engineering before taking an interest in art in the 1920s and studied at the 'Art Students League in New York. In 1926 Calder moved to Paris to continue his training and familiarize himself with the European avant-garde through Marcel Duchamp, Jean Arp and Fernand Léger. The same year, Calder began his most famous play: & nbsp; & nbsp; Cirque Calder, a mechanical miniature circus created to be used in front of an audience. Calder also said about his interest in the circus & nbsp; "I am passionate about spatial relationships ... everything related to the big space has always interested me". & Nbsp; its biomorphic forms recall the surrealism of Joan Miró with his curved lines and its geometric shapes with rounded angles. It is by admiring the colored squares of Piet Mondrian in 1930, true revelation for him, that he imagines them floating in space, making movement the "& nbsp; material & nbsp;" & nbsp; main of his work. He embarks on geometric abstraction and created moving wire sculptures called "mobiles" by Marcel Duchamp. They completely break with the dense and imposing sculptures of the time, here it is lightness that prevails. It is the beginning of kinetic art, even if for Alexander Calder the goal is not so much the movement but the search for balance, symmetry, silence, lightness, subtlety ... From 1933, The success is felt for Calder, notably with the "La Fontaine de Mercure" canvas showed at the Universal Exhibition in 1937. In 1952, he received the Grand Prix de la Biennale de Venice, in 1964 the Guggenheim honors his talent through A large retrospective, and its influence still resonates since in 2016, the Tate Modern implemented a great retrospective on the legendary sculptor.