Alexander (Sandy) Calder
By Crystal Gaudio
Alexander (Sandy) Calder was a monumental sculptor, born in Lawton, Pennsylvania on the twenty-second of July, 1898. The Calder family has a history of successful sculptors. Alexander Stirling Calder, Sandy's father, was a classical figurative sculptor as well as Sandy's grandfather Alexander Milne Calder. Traveling extensively around North America with his family as a child, Sandy lived in Philadelphia, Arizona, California, and New York before beginning his college career at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. After graduating in 1919 with a masters degree in Engineering, Sandy explored the job market available to him. He held several jobs ranging from insurance investigator to timekeeper and later a draftsman at a logging camp, none of which captured his full devotion. At twenty-five he realized his true passion laid in art, and he entered the Art Students League in New York.
Beginning a life as an artist, Sandy earned money making single-line drawings for the National Police Gazette. The single-line drawings developed, while he was studying in Paris, into wire sculptures. Sandy's artistic talent continued to evolve during the 1930's in exhibits around the world: Paris, Berlin, and New York. In 1931 he married Louisa James and returned to Paris to continue his work. Sandy established close relationships with artists of his time like Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miro, Mondrian and Le Corbusier. In Paris, 1932, Sandy exhibited mobiles or "stabiles" for the first time. Yearly exhibits in either Europe or North America continued well into the 1960's.
Sandy's stabiles embody a delicate force revolutionary in the art world. Restricted by the laws of Physics, torque, friction and force, these objects tie science and art together into a kinetic sculpture. Balancing an incomprehensible visual contradiction, careful measuring creates excitement in impossible movement. "His monumental stabiles rest their enormous size and weight lightly on elegant fins and flanges and reach outward from the-earth" (Robert Osborn.)
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