Calder

Calder: Fotoscop Visual Language; Peter Bellew; photographs Clovis Prevost; selection and sequence J. Prats Valles; Chartwell Books Inc., Secaucus NJ, 1969. Alexander Calder(1898 - 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and his monumental public sculptures. In Paris in 1926, Calder began to create his Cirque Calder, a miniature circus fashioned from wire, cloth, string, rubber, cork, and other found objects. Designed to be transportable (it grew to fill five large suitcases), the circus was presented on both sides of the Atlantic. Soon, his Cirque Calder (on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art at present) became popular with the Parisian avant-garde. He also invented wire sculpture, or "drawing in space", and in 1929 had his first solo show of these sculptures in Paris at Galerie Billiet. In the 1950s, Calder concentrated more on producing monumental sculptures (his agrandissements period), and public commissions increasingly came his way in the 1960s. Notable examples are .125 (1957) for JFK Airport in New York, Spirale (1958) for UNESCO in Paris, and Trois disques, commissioned for Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Calder's largest sculpture, at 25.7 meters high, was El Sol Rojo, constructed outside the Estadio Azteca for the 1968 Summer Olympics "Cultural Olympiad" events in Mexico City. Calder created over 2,000 pieces of jewellery over the course of his career, many as gifts for friends. Beginning in 1966, winners of the National Magazine Awards are awarded an "Ellie", a copper-colored stabile resembling an elephant, which was designed by Calder. Two months after his death, the artist was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, by President Gerald Ford. This book is in fine condition in a near-fine dust jacket that is now in a protective mylar wrap.…