26 PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTION Alexander Calder Crag with white flower and white discs 1974 painted sheet metal and wire 76 x 86 x 48 in. (193 x 218.4 x 121.9 cm.) Signed with monogram and dated "CA 74" on the base. This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A-02533.
Provenance Perls Galleries, New York Makler Gallery, Philadelphia Private Collection, Pennsylvania Christie's, New York, Post-War and Contemporary Art Morning Session, November 14, 2007, lot 187 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited New York, Perls Galleries, Alexander Calder Crags and Critters of 1974, October 15 - November 16, 1974 Literature Alexander Calder Crags and Critters of 1974, exh. cat., New York: Perls Galleries, pp. 1, 15, no. 2 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay “The basis of everything for me is the universe. The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle.” ALEXANDER CALDER 1962 Exemplifying Alexander Calder’s iconic and ethereal sculptures, Crag with white flower and white discs represents the culmination of Calder’s decades-long exploration of the mobile and stabile elements – an extraordinary synthesis of the painterly and sculptural idioms. Originally created for the exhibition Crags and Critters in 1974, the present work embodies Calder’s poetic employment of floating color and suspended shapes, an enchanting and fanciful manifestation of youthful exuberance illuminated in dancing forms, igniting the sensory experience. Calder began his career not as an artist, like his sculptor father and painter mother, but as a mechanical engineer in the early Twentieth century. Developing both his technical knowledge and a strong personal interest in mechanics, Calder embraced the mathematical and scientific aspects of his formal training in his now renowned abstract metal and wire compositions. Relocating to Paris, the epicenter of avant- garde artistic theory and practice, in the early 1930s, Calder found himself among a diverse group of aesthetes including pioneers of the Constructivist and Surrealist movements such as Wassily Kandinsky, Salvador Dali, and Piet Mondrian Ensconced in the vibrant pre-war atmosphere of ex-pat Paris, Calder was inextricably captivated by the Surrealists’ concern with the imagination, fantasy, and the unconscious. Perhaps most intrigued by the philosophy of his close friends Joan Miró and Mondrian, Calder quickly realized the manifold expressive possibilities in the simplicity of reduced line and primary color. Calder’s release from the formal concerns of his scholarly training inspired the artist’s revolutionary approach to the abstract three-dimensional form. Putting pen to paper to record his Abstraction-Création theory, Calder expounded, in 1932: “How can art be realized? Out of volumes, motion, spaces bounded by the great space, the universe. Out of different masses, light, heavy, middling—indicated by variations of size or color—directional line—vectors which represent speeds, velocities, accelerations, forces, etc. . . .—these directions making between them meaningful angles, and senses, together defining one big conclusion or many. Spaces, volumes, suggested by the smallest means in contrast to their mass, or even including them, juxtaposed, pierced by vectors, crossed by speeds. Nothing at all of this is fixed. Each element able to move, to stir, to oscillate, to come and go in its relationships with the other elements in its universe.” (A. Calder, “Comment réaliser l’art?” Abstraction-Création, Art Non Figuratif, 1932, no. 1, p. 6) Calder’s utilization of painted sheet metal and wire rather than the paint, charcoal and canvas of his Parisian contemporaries marked a significant departure from the Surrealist idiom espoused during this period. Seeking to recreate the dynamism manifested in these painterly surfaces, Calder noted that the physicality of his chosen medium enhanced his creative process: “…wire, or something to twist, or tear, or bend, is an easier medium for me to think in.” (A. Calder, The Painter’s Object, Myfanwy Evans (ed.), 1937, pp. 62-63) Capturing in these tactile media the interplay of negative space and motion, and integrating the color of neo-plasticism and surrealist imagery, Calder’s elegant, celestial works are monume
26 PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTION Alexander Calder Crag with white flower and white discs 1974 painted sheet metal and wire 76 x 86 x 48 in. (193 x 218.4 x 121.9 cm.) Signed with monogram and dated "CA 74" on the base. This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A-02533.
Provenance Perls Galleries, New York Makler Gallery, Philadelphia Private Collection, Pennsylvania Christie's, New York, Post-War and Contemporary Art Morning Session, November 14, 2007, lot 187 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner Exhibited New York, Perls Galleries, Alexander Calder Crags and Critters of 1974, October 15 - November 16, 1974 Literature Alexander Calder Crags and Critters of 1974, exh. cat., New York: Perls Galleries, pp. 1, 15, no. 2 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay “The basis of everything for me is the universe. The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle.” ALEXANDER CALDER 1962 Exemplifying Alexander Calder’s iconic and ethereal sculptures, Crag with white flower and white discs represents the culmination of Calder’s decades-long exploration of the mobile and stabile elements – an extraordinary synthesis of the painterly and sculptural idioms. Originally created for the exhibition Crags and Critters in 1974, the present work embodies Calder’s poetic employment of floating color and suspended shapes, an enchanting and fanciful manifestation of youthful exuberance illuminated in dancing forms, igniting the sensory experience. Calder began his career not as an artist, like his sculptor father and painter mother, but as a mechanical engineer in the early Twentieth century. Developing both his technical knowledge and a strong personal interest in mechanics, Calder embraced the mathematical and scientific aspects of his formal training in his now renowned abstract metal and wire compositions. Relocating to Paris, the epicenter of avant- garde artistic theory and practice, in the early 1930s, Calder found himself among a diverse group of aesthetes including pioneers of the Constructivist and Surrealist movements such as Wassily Kandinsky, Salvador Dali, and Piet Mondrian Ensconced in the vibrant pre-war atmosphere of ex-pat Paris, Calder was inextricably captivated by the Surrealists’ concern with the imagination, fantasy, and the unconscious. Perhaps most intrigued by the philosophy of his close friends Joan Miró and Mondrian, Calder quickly realized the manifold expressive possibilities in the simplicity of reduced line and primary color. Calder’s release from the formal concerns of his scholarly training inspired the artist’s revolutionary approach to the abstract three-dimensional form. Putting pen to paper to record his Abstraction-Création theory, Calder expounded, in 1932: “How can art be realized? Out of volumes, motion, spaces bounded by the great space, the universe. Out of different masses, light, heavy, middling—indicated by variations of size or color—directional line—vectors which represent speeds, velocities, accelerations, forces, etc. . . .—these directions making between them meaningful angles, and senses, together defining one big conclusion or many. Spaces, volumes, suggested by the smallest means in contrast to their mass, or even including them, juxtaposed, pierced by vectors, crossed by speeds. Nothing at all of this is fixed. Each element able to move, to stir, to oscillate, to come and go in its relationships with the other elements in its universe.” (A. Calder, “Comment réaliser l’art?” Abstraction-Création, Art Non Figuratif, 1932, no. 1, p. 6) Calder’s utilization of painted sheet metal and wire rather than the paint, charcoal and canvas of his Parisian contemporaries marked a significant departure from the Surrealist idiom espoused during this period. Seeking to recreate the dynamism manifested in these painterly surfaces, Calder noted that the physicality of his chosen medium enhanced his creative process: “…wire, or something to twist, or tear, or bend, is an easier medium for me to think in.” (A. Calder, The Painter’s Object, Myfanwy Evans (ed.), 1937, pp. 62-63) Capturing in these tactile media the interplay of negative space and motion, and integrating the color of neo-plasticism and surrealist imagery, Calder’s elegant, celestial works are monume
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