Alexander Calder Biography

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

4. Moved to Paris in 1926 & built a
miniature circus…

5. Interest in Kinetic art led him to
create Mobiles, an art form for
which he is given credit for…

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

12. Joan Miro Piet Mondrian
Interested in the work of Joan Miro
and Piet Mondrian…

13. Alexander Calder
died from a heart
attack in 1976. He
was committed to
creating art until his
death.