1. Unlike many artists, according to his wife, Alexander Calder “wasn’t tormented. He was always expressing his sense of pleasure and joie de vivre . He enjoyed life.”
Calder’s contentment was reflected in his work: “Above all, [he felt] art should be happy.”
Calder, who was known as Sandy, was a warm and witty, round-bellied man who turned a childhood love of tinkering into some of the twentieth century’s most innovative and celebratory sculpture.

2. Born in Pennsylvania, Calder grew up surrounded by artists; his father and grandfather were accomplished sculptors and his mother was a painter. Their house was filled with paintings and sculptures and artist friends whose conversations centered on art.
Throughout his childhood, Calder made toys for himself and his older sister out of wood, wire, old buttons and bits of cloth and string. His childhood room, according to his sister, was “a maze of strings; they pulled up shades and lowered them, pulled the casement windows closed, turned the lights on and off.”

3. Blue and Red Bull with Yellow Head, 1971
Two Acrobats, 1928
Rearing Horse, 1928
Calder did not initially consider making a career out of art, however, and chose to study mechanical engineering in college. Although he did well and worked as an engineer for several years, he came to decide that he wanted to be an artist.
Calder then attended art school in New York City, where he quickly discovered two of his lifelong favorite subjects: the animals at the Central Park Zoo, which he visited regularly, and the performers at the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, which he attended nightly every time it came to town.
Black Camel with Blue Head and Red Tongue, 1971
Blue and Red Bull with Yellow Head, 1971

4. Original Toys, circa 1926 Modern reproductions
In 1926, at the age of 28, Calder moved to Paris. He had already lost interest in painting and drawing and had switched his paints, brushes and canvases for carving tools, scissors, wire and pliers. “I think best in wire,” he explained.
Wire also earned him good money, as a series of movable pull toys for a toy company, made out of wire, wood, rubber and cloth, were a commercial success.
Modern reproductions

5. The same playfulness that had animated Calder’s toys was even more apparent in his famous Cirque Calder. Begun merely for fun, Calder’s collection of movable circus animals and performers made of wood, wire, cloth and string grew from a small cast of characters that he would show friends for a few minutes to an elaborate 2-hour, 70-figure spectacle with its own studio that became one of the most popular entertainments in Paris and New York for several years, attended by artists, writers, intellectuals and circus performers themselves.
As the circus’s ringmaster, Calder would operate a complex array of strings, springs, wire and cranks to make trapeze artists swing through the air, tightrope walkers balance on the high wire, and circus animals perform tricks.
A culmination of Calder’s lifelong fascination with handmade playthings and the circus, the Cirque was also literally performance art.

6. Calder next experimented with mechanized sculptures made of wire alone that moved by means of electric motors, gears or wire cranks.
Sculptures like a goldfish swimming back and forth reflected Calder’s belief that art should not be static, but their movement was too restricted and repetitious, and they were subject to frequent breakdowns.
Goldfish Bowl, 1929

7. Flying Fish, 1957 Sumac II, 1952 International Mobile, 1949
The mobile, a sculpture that moves in the air even though it is standing on a base, attached to a wall or hanging from a ceiling, offered Calder a way to show that “the next step in sculpture [was] motion.”
Calder did not invent kinetic art (art that moves), which had existed in various forms and cultures over time, but he did introduce the world to what would become its most well-known, accessible and beloved form: the mobile.
International Mobile, 1949
Performing Seal, 1950

8. Woman and Bird in the Night, Joan Miro
Calder’s inspiration came in 1930, upon a visit to the studio of his friend, Piet Mondrian, who painted compositions of squares and rectangles in primary colors outlined in black.
Staring at Mondrian’s colorful shapes tacked up on a wall, Calder realized he wanted to see the shapes move through space.
The mobiles Calder created are made of wire, wood, sheet metal and occasionally glass, string and found objects.
Their bright colors and organic shapes are influenced by another of Calder’s friends, Joan Miro.
Trafalgar Square, Piet Mondrian, 1943
The Melancholic Singer, Joan Miro,

9. Untitled, 1938 National Gallery III, 1972 Steel Fish, 1934
The mobiles move in response to the slightest change in the air, their motion a function of the intricate balancing and counterbalancing of the weight within the pieces themselves.
“When everything goes right,” Calder said, “a mobile is a piece of poetry that dances with the joy of life and surprises.”
What Calder’s mobiles do not do is depict anything other than themselves: “I am a sculptor,” insisted Calder, “because I want to avoid telling stories.”
Steel Fish, 1934
The Circle, 1934

10. Red Horse, 1974, National Gallery Sculpture Garden
Calder’s artistic achievements do not end with his mobiles. He is also known for his “stabiles,” giant, abstract sculptures without movable parts, which have implied rather than actual movement.
The stabiles, which can exceed 70 feet in height and 50 tons in weight, were erected throughout the world in during the 1960s and 70s, frequently in collaboration with some of the 20th century’s great architects, including Le Corbusier, Philip Johnson, Mies vanderRohe and I.M. Pei.
Red Horse, 1974, National Gallery Sculpture Garden
Flamingo, 1973, Chicago

11. Finny Fish, National Gallery, 1948
Untitled, 1976
Alexander Calder was happily married and had two daughters. He lived and worked in both America and France. He died in 1976.
One of Calder’s giant mobiles dominates the foyer of the National Gallery’s East Building, which also has a room permanently filled with Calder’s works, from mobiles to whimsical wire and glass animal sculptures.
Finny Fish, National Gallery, 1948