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Alexander Calder

Untitled, ca. 1957

Now On View

Description

Maker

  • Alexander Calder, 1898-1976, American

Title

Untitled

Year

ca. 1957

Medium

Painted steel

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • painted steel

Dimensions

146.4 x 87 x 71.1 cm (57 5/8 x 34 1/4 x 28 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Unsigned

Type

  • Sculpture

Credit

Gift of Marcel Breuer

Object Number

70.124

Projects & Publications

Publications

Selected Works

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Jim Isermann

November 17, 2000 - March 4, 2001

Twentieth-Century Sculpture from the Collection

June 7 - August 18, 1996

Modern and Contemporary Galleries

The playful character of Alexander Calder’s sculptures has its origins in the childhood toys he created from pieces of wire and scrap metal. Initially trained as an engineer, he went on to apply keen understanding of how things work to the constructions he devised as a sculptor. Earlier 20th-century artists, including Marcel Duchamp, were the pioneers of mechanical sculpture, and it was in fact Duchamp who christened Calder’s inventions “mobiles.” The concept refers to a sculpture that is always in flux, its components designed to move freely and to constantly shift relationships of lines, forms, and colors. In the delicately balanced format of a mobile, flat metal shapes are hinged to rods which in turn hang from cords or—in the case of this work—from fixed supports. Calder also used upright metal forms to create “stabiles,” stationary sculptures that seemed perched on slender feet. In this untitled work of 1957, formerly owned by the architect Marcel Breuer, he combines active and static approaches by suspending a floating constellation of disks from a tripod resembling an imaginary animal.

Paula and Leonard Granoff Galleries

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is Untitled with the accession number of 70.124. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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