Biography of Alexander Calder

Alexander Calder (July 22, 1898-Lawnton, Pennsylvania, New York, 11 november 1976) was one of the most famous American sculptors.

Calder sculptors came from a family: his grandfather Alexander Milne Calder (from Scotland), the 250 figures of the Philadelphia City Hall in Philadelphia sculpted and also his father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was a renowned sculptor.

Calder began as self-taught and went to Paris in 1926. Here he attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and he learned avant-garde contemporaries like Joan Miró, Hans Arp, Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and Marcel Duchamp.
In 1929 Calder met during a trip to New York his future wife, Louisa James, grandniece of writer Henry James. They married in 1931.

From an encounter in 1930 with Piet Mondrian in his Parisian studio created his first mobiles, which purportedly not to the laws of gravity were subject. With these mobiles he was finally known and in 1931 he had his first major exhibition in Paris. He was a member of the artists ' group Abstraction-Création, which affected its development towards abstraction. Calder created his first in 1934 for the outdoor space constructed mobile.

He also made his first large abstract sculptures. This he called on the advice of Arp "stabiles", to make a distinction with the mobiles. For him, it was important, in it stimulated by Marcel Duchamp and others, to abstraction and movement.