Date: 1974
Size: 19.5 x 36 inches
Artist: Calder, Alexander
About the poster: This poster is for a 1974 exhibition of monumental sculptural work by Alexander Calder is shown at the famous Parisian Foundation Maeght.
About Alexander Calder: "Alexander Calder (July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stabile sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry, and household objects... Calder received a degree from Stevens in 1919. For the next several years, he held a variety of engineering jobs, including working as a hydraulics engineer and a draughtsman for the New York Edison Company... Calder moved to New York and enrolled at the Art Students' League, studying briefly with Thomas Hart Benton and John Sloan, among others.[14] While a student, he worked for the National Police Gazette where, in 1925, one of his assignments was sketching the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. Calder became fascinated with the circus, a theme that would reappear in his later work...
In 1926, Calder moved to Paris where he established a studio at 22 rue Daguerre in the Montparnasse Quarter. In June 1929, while traveling by boat from Paris to New York, Calder met his future wife, Louisa James, grandniece of author Henry James and philosopher William James. They married in 1931. While in Paris, Calder met and became friends with some avant-garde artists, including Joan Miró, Jean Arp, and Marcel Duchamp. Calder and Louisa returned to America in 1933 to settle in a farmhouse they purchased in Roxbury, Connecticut, where they raised a family (first daughter, Sandra born 1935, second daughter, Mary, in 1939).
In 1962, Calder settled into his new workshop Carroi, which was of a futuristic design and overlooked the valley of the Lower Chevrière to Saché in Indre-et-Loire (France). He did not hesitate to offer his gouaches and small mobiles to his friends in the country; he even donated to the town a stabile trônant, which since 1974 is situated front of the church: an anti-sculpture free from gravity. Throughout his artistic career, Calder named many of his works in French, regardless of where they were destined for eventual display." (Source: Wikipedia)