1. Alexander Calder
American Modern Artist (1898- 1976)
Inventor of the MOBILE
Created by Ms. Moore
Pinconning High School
Art Dept.
2. Calder’s
Childhood…
• Born into a family of artists in
Lawnton, Pennsylvania
• Father was a prominent sculptor;
Mother was a painter
• In 1902, at the age of 4, Alexander
created his first sculpture- a clay
elephant
• Discouraged from becoming an artist
professionally, but supported as an
artist
Alexander Calder on the beach with his mother in
1909
3. • After studying engineering,
in 1923 Calder began
attending the Art Students’
League in New York
• Freelance artist for the
National Police Gazette
• Assignment: Ringling
Brothers’s and Barnum &
Baily Circus- beginning of
his fascination with the
circus
5. Interest in Kinetic art led him to
create Mobiles, an art form for
which he is given credit for…
6.
7. Playful with his work bringing humor and a sense of
play to his work
Made wire portraits
Began to make moving sculptures
Artist Marcel Dunchamp called Calder’s work
“mobiles” from the French word “to move”
Lived in Roxbury, Connecticut with his wife Louisa
James almost his entire life
Colorful, abstract forms in red, blue, yellow & black
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12. Joan Miro Piet Mondrian
Interested in the work of Joan Miro
and Piet Mondrian…