Stunning in both its elegant simplicity and exquisite balance, Untitled from 1948 is a superb early example of the balletic precision and remarkable dynamism that characterizes the very finest of Alexander Calder’s renowned mobile sculptures. The present work is distinguished by the remarkable structural purity of the unpainted metal elements, which mark Untitled as a rare expression of the artist’s interest in luminous energy, revisited after years of wart.mes economy. With sheet.mes tal scarce amid World War II, Calder had turned toward bits of wood, shards of glass and ceramics, tin cans, and other scrap materials for his sculptures; executed three years after the end of the war, Untitled represents a innovative return to and celebration of his favored media on a grand scale.

Works from the collects ion of Kay Unger 

Underscoring its rarity is this work’s impeccable provenance: having first belonged to the illustrious architect Wallace K. Harrison, who orchestrated the design of Rockefeller Center, the United Nations Headquarters, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, among many other major projects, the present work reflects Calder’s enduring influence on the mid-century modernism that has long defined the aesthetic landscape of Manhattan. Calder, along with Marc Chagall and Fernand Léger, was a frequent guest at Harrison’s landmarked Long Island estate and had a show in 1940 at the house. Several years before the execution of Untitled, Harrison commissioned Calder to build a mobile for the Hotel Avila Ballroom in Caracas, Venezuela; also executed in unpainted sheet.mes tal, that work is now held in the collects ion of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Then acquired by famed collects ors Harold and Hester Diamond, friends of Harrison’s who also acquired the Long Island property, the present work later passed into the current esteemed private collects ion of Nancy Epstein, the present owner’s mother. Most recently, Untitled has held pride of place in the impeccably designed Soho loft of fashion designer and philanthropist Kay Unger, where it is a key part of the larger transatlantic dialogue between Paris and New York that lies at the heart of the her collects ion. A singular and storied example of Calder’s iconic and cherished mobiles, the present work is a feat of its maker’s inquisitive mind and groundbreaking innovation, marking the artist at his most technically adept and conceptually inventive.

Despite his obvious talents from an early age, Calder did not originally set out to become a sculptor. In 1923, he enrolled in the Art Students League in New York to study painting, working under Ashcan artists such as George Luks and John Sloan. His inherent creative drive and flair for the arts led him to Paris, where he worked with industrial materials like sheet.mes tal and wire, and attracted the attention of contemporaries such as Man Ray, Fernand Léger, Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, and Piet Mondrian. Indeed, the impetus behind Calder’s move to abstraction occurred in a now legendary visit to Piet Mondrian’s studio in 1930, where the sight of rectangles of colored paper, arranged on the wall for compositional experimentation, compelled Calder to suggest that they “oscillate.” Expanding upon the gestures and motions already present in much of his wire sculptures and his Cirque Calder, Calder saw the future of sculpture in motion, and soon composed his first mobiles.

When the United States entered World War II, supply shortages forced him to use alternative materials like wood and glass, which allowed him to experiment with shape, color, and weight in a way that would deeply influence his later large-scale metal compositions. With Untitled, Calder makes a triumphant post-war return to his signature materials, allowing the unembellished simplicity and innate properties of the sheet.mes tal to come to the fore. As the title suggests, the smooth silvery surfaces of the elements shimmer and shine with reflected ambient light, constantly shifting as their forms move through space. Showcasing his learnings from those wart.mes investigations, the exquisite visual balance and precise architecture of the present work narrate a period of artistic assurance and technical innovation at a t.mes when Calder’s inimitable career was on the ascent.

Comprising ten organically shaped elements in varying sizes, the present work gracefully cascades from its suspension in a stacked diagonal that harmonizes a vertical descent with an outward expansion, as the large, weighty shapes sway serenely at the top of the structure, while a flurry of smaller elements twirl below. Despite its apparently mechanical execution and industrial materials, the sculpture possesses an air of ethereal weightlessness, as its dancing disks evoke the intangible qualities of the air that propels them. Its nimble movement is heightened by the aerodynamic apertures in several of the elements; in the 1940s, Calder began piercing certain components of his mobiles in an effort both to heighten their transparency and surface animation and, to a more technical end, to adjust the physical and visual weight of the work as a whole. As he explained, “When I cut out my plates I have two things in mind. I want them to be more alive, and I think about balance. Which explains the holes in the plates. The most important thing is that the mobile be able to catch the air. It has to be able to move.” (Alexander Calder in 1959, cited in: XXE siècle, Homage à Calder, Paris 1972, p. 98) In Untitled, the central pierced elements are suspended in perfect counterbalance to each other; as the slightest breath of air drifts through their openings they begin to rotate smoothly and organically, in a seamlessly choreographed cadence that seems to defy gravity itself. With mobiles like the present, Calder revolutionized the concept of traditional sculpture by utilizing the full potential of bodies in motion through the remarkable manipulation of metal and wire, constructed to further the kinetic possibilities of art.

Artist

Alexander Calder