Alexander Calder, Eucalyptus, 1940, Sheet metal, wire, and paint, 94 ½ x 61inches, Calder Foundation, New York; Gift of Andréa Davidson, Shawn Davidson,Alexander S.C. Rower, & Holton Rower, 2010. © 2013 Calder Foundation, New York/ArtistsRights Society (ARS), New York, photo: Calder Foundation, New York/Art Resource, NY
Alexander Calder, La Grande vitesse (intermediate maquette), 1969, Sheetmetal, bolts, and paint, 102 x 135 x 93 inches, Calder Foundation, New York. © 2013Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, photo: CalderFoundation, New York/Art Resource, NY
Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde to Iconic The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents ‘Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde to Iconic’, the first monographic presentation of Alexander Calder’s work in a Los Angeles museum. November 24, 2013 — July 27, 2014.]]>
Source: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
Taking as its compass the large-scale sculpture “Three Quintains(Hello Girls)”, a site-specific fountain commissioned by LACMA’s Art MuseumCouncil in 1964 for the opening of LACMA’s Hancock Park campus, ‘Calder andAbstraction’ brings together a range of nearly fifty abstract sculptures,including mobiles, stabiles, and maquettes for larger outdoor works, thatspan more than four decades of the artist’s career. The exhibition atLACMA is organized by LACMA’s senior curator of modern art StephanieBarron and designed by Gehry Partners, LLP.
“Calder and Abstraction” traces the evolution of abstraction in the artist’ssculptural practice. The exhibition, arranged in loose chronologicalorder, presents highlights of Calder’s oeuvre from his earliest abstractworks to the crescendo of his career in the late 1940s to his later publicsculptural commissions. While he is considered one of the most popularartists of his time, his work also shares sensibilities with lessimmediately accessible artists, including the Surrealists and thechampions of pure abstraction that made up the Abstraction-Création group,such as Robert Delaunay, Theo van Doesburg, and Kurt Schwitters, amongothers.
“‘Calder and Abstraction’ offers a window into the remarkably originalthinking of this distinguished artist and elucidates his revolutionary andpivotal contribution to the development of modern sculpture,” says MichaelGovan, CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of LACMA. “‘Three Quintains (HelloGirls)’ at LACMA has for decades been seen as an emblem of the museum.Following in the footsteps of its legacy, our campus continues to beenhanced by large-scale, public art—most recently with the inclusion ofChris Burden’s ‘Urban Light’ (2008) and Michael Heizer’s ‘Levitated Mass'(2012).”
The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the CalderFoundation, New York. After its presentation in Los Angeles, theexhibition travels to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA (September 6,2014 – January 4, 2015).
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