Alexander Calder

Born in Pennsylvania, USA, in 1898, he passed away in New York City in 1976. He was one of the leading sculptors of the 20th century and an artist who left an extremely important mark on art history as the originator of "mobiles," moving sculptures.

Calder, who grew up in an artistic family with a sculptor father and a painter mother, initially studied engineering, and his structural thinking greatly influenced his later creative activities.

In the early 1920s, he seriously studied art at the Art Students League of New York, and eventually created the unique wire sculpture "Cirque Calder," which took the circus as its theme. This small circus, made of wire, cloth, and wood chips, was a comprehensive performance piece in which Calder himself acted as the performer, already revealing his playfulness and keen sense of space.

After moving to France in 1927, he began working in Paris and interacted with Joan MiróJean Cocteau Man Ray Fernand Léger Le Corbusier Piet Mondrian and others.

Especially in 1930, his visit to Mondrian's studio was decisive. From there, Calder awoke to the possibility of developing color and space not as a static composition, but as "abstract art in motion." In 1931, he joined the abstract art group Abstraction-Création.

Around this time, he began creating sculptures that moved gently with the flow of air.

Through delicate lines, vibrant colors, and compositions that seemed to depict space itself, he breathed new life into sculpture.

Calder, who created birds from a single sheet of metal and the rhythm of colors floating in space, is an extremely original figure in 20th-century art.

His works continue to evoke a sense of freedom, lightness, and pure poetic sensibility in viewers even today.