Displaying items by tag: Alexander Calder

This summer, fourteen monumental sculptures by Alexander Calder (1898-1976) are taking over the Rijksmuseum’s 'outdoor gallery' for the largest freely accessible outdoor exhibition of his work to date.

Calder (1898-1976) is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated inventors of modern sculpture. His cut-out and colorful abstract objects that move in the air or rest firmly on the ground can be found throughout the world, whether in museums or in gardens and public plazas, ranking him among the first and most prolific sculptors of large-scale outdoor works. This show of his monumental sculptures in the gardens of the Rijksmuseum creates a fascinating landscape of stately abstract forms.

Guest curator Alfred Pacquement, former director of Musée National d’Art Moderne Centre Pompidou in Paris, has selected mobiles, stabiles, and standing mobiles by Calder from major museums and private collections.

This exhibition is the second in a series of annual international sculpture displays, which will be presented in the Rijksmuseum’s gardens over the next four years, made possible with funding from the BankGiro Loterij and the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Alexander Calder's abstract works revolutionized modern sculpture and made him one of the most celebrated artists of the 20^th century. In collaboration with the Calder Foundation, this exhibition brings together 40 of the artist's mobiles (kinetic metal works) and stabiles (dynamic monumental sculptures) to explore how Alexander Calder introduced the visual vocabulary of the French Surrealists into the American vernacular.

Alexander Calder's prominent "Black Crescent" mobile has been removed from the Delaware Art Museum's East Court and its collections database, making it potentially the third work the museum will sell by October.

Museum CEO Mike Miller would not confirm whether the mobile by the late sculptor, purchased by the museum in 1961, will be sold. The Wilmington museum is trying to raise $30 million to repay construction debt from a 2005 facilities expansion and replenish its endowment.

On Thursday, May 22, “Tara Donovan: Untitled” opened at Pace Gallery’s pop-up in Menlo Park, California. It will be the final exhibition held at the Gallery’s temporary West Coast location. Prior to the Tara Donovan show, Pace presented an exhibition of stabiles, bronzes, standing and hanging mobiles, colorful gouaches, and wearable jewelry by Alexander Calder. Pace, which specializes in contemporary art, has permanent spaces in New York, London, Beijing, and Hong Kong.

“Untitled” surveys work by the Brooklyn-based artist Tara Donovan from 2000 to the present. Donovan is best known for her large-scale installations and sculptures made from manufactured materials, such as Scotch tape, Styrofoam cups, paper plates, toothpicks, and plastic drinking straws. Donovan creates her process-driven works by repeatedly layering a single material until an everyday object is transformed into a complex, otherworldly work of art. Donovan also plays with perceptual phenomenon through light and scale, using a variety of materials and three-dimensional forms to create captivating optical effects.

On Tuesday, May 13, Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art evening sale in New York achieved a jaw-dropping $745 million -- the highest total for a single auction in art history. The sale exceeded the auction house’s results in November of $691.6 million as well as last May’s total of $495 million for postwar and contemporary artworks.

The auction, which carried a pre-sale estimate of approximately $500 million, was brimming with top-notch material. Out of the 72 lots offered, only four failed to find buyers. New auction records were set for a spate of high-selling artists, including Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Barnett Newman, and Frank Stella.

A billion pound collection of modern masterpieces which has languished in a storeroom bunker under Tehran's Museum of Contemporary Art in Iran may finally see the light of day, under changes in the new government's policy. Paintings by Picasso, Miro, Calder, Bacon, Pollock, Warhol, Lichtenstein, Van Gogh and Monet have languished in a storeroom beneath the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art since the  Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The collection was put together in the 1960s and 1970s by Queen Farah Pahlavi, the wife of the last shah of Iran. Fearing that they would be destroyed by the religious turmoil that gripped the the country, the works were carefully packed up, crated and removed from public view.

 Gagosian Gallery in New York is currently hosting an exhibition of Alexander Calder’s gouache paintings on paper. Best known for his kinetic sculptures or “mobiles,” Calder created lesser-known gouache paintings throughout his life.

Calder created his first series of paintings in gouache during a year-long stay in Aix-en-Provence, France, in 1953. These spur-of-the-moment paintings were more immediate than Calder’s large-sale sculptures, which he was producing at the same time. While Calder’s paintings and sculptures both explore form, space, and balance, his gouaches are anchored in the natural world, while his sculptures tend to be more abstract. Calder also wandered outside of his restricted palette of black, white, and other primary colors in his gouaches, often experimenting with vivid ochres, yellows, and vermillion

An unsigned doodle of a craggy, mustachioed face that turned up at auction a few weeks ago has been identified as the product of a famous circle of friends.

The Calder Foundation in Manhattan paid about $4,800 for the drawing at Thomaston Place Auction Galleries in Thomaston, Me.; the catalog had described it as a portrait of the French artist Fernand Léger by his friend Alexander Calder. But the foundation was wary at first, since the market has become treacherous.

Beyond the fields of lavender and honey-colored farmhouses, the land that launched a thousand fantasies is also home to another kind of delight: dazzling works of art and architecture by some of the great masters of modernism, from Picasso to Le Corbusier. Gully Wells goes on a treasure hunt.

One summer when I was a young and indolent teenager, I was packed off by my mother to stay for a week or so with some old family friends who lived in a farmhouse in the hills above Antibes on the French Riviera. Monsieur, tall with a wild bush of white hair, was a painter, and Madame, petite with olive-black eyes, was a sculptor.

The 27th edition of The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) opened to the public on March 14 in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The show, which is widely regarded as the world’s leading art fair, brings together 275 of the finest art and antiques dealers from around the globe. Offerings include everything from Old Master paintings and antiquities to 20th century design and contemporary art.

This year’s show began with a V.I.P preview on Thursday, March 13, which saw a number of big-ticket sales. Galerie Odermatt-Vedovi (Paris) sold a mobile by Alexander Calder to a European collector for around $2.6 million and Van de Weghe Fine Art (New York) sold Pablo Picasso’s “Tete couronnee” in black crayon on paper to a Belgian collector for $485,000.

A number of important works are being offered at this year’s fair including Vincent van Gogh’s “Moulin de la Galette,” which will be exhibited by Dickinson (New York/London); a double portrait of Sir George Villiers and Lady Catherine Manners as Adonis and Venus by Sir Anthony van Dyck, which is being shown by David Koetser Gallery (Zurich); and three works by Damien Hirst, which are being offered by Tomasso Brothers Fine Art (London/Leeds).

TEFAF runs through March 23.