A Two-Faced Guy from circa 1964 is a realisation of Alexander Calder’s lifelong pursuit of the theatrical potential of the sculptural discipline, and an exemplary demonstration of his playful ingenuity. A maquette for the monumental outdoor sculpture A Two-Faced Guy (1969), lends insight into a practice which formed a crucial part of Calder’s working process.

Executed in his signature palette of black and red, the present work is a rare example of Calder’s figurative sculpture. Two exaggerated profiles, one curvaceous and the other entirely perpendicular, bisect each other in a precisely engineered ninety degree placement. Almond shaped eyes descend into the steep, plunging nose, sloping upwards before receding into the lips, protruding curiously outwards in an animated profile of a bald man. Cutting through this curvaceous silhouette is a vibrantly red man whose downturned eyes and sharp nose morph into a straight smile and square chin. In its intimate scale, the tactile experience of turning the maquette around reveals surprising perspectives.

Calder once proclaimed in an interview in 1957, "I feel that there’s a greater scope for the imagination in work that can’t be pinpointed to any specific emotion" (Calder cited in: Selden Rodman, Conversations with Artists, New York 1957). Indeed the present work, designed to be installed outdoors, forms a dynamic relationship with light and movement. The two faces, which are destined to never meet in their material form, achieve the impossible through a dramatic staging of light. When the light shines upon the red surface, a velvety dark shadow emerges and the two-faced guy is revealed before our eyes. The drama of its unveiling, achieved through the interplay of light, not only encapsulates the essence of Calder’s performative sculpture, but is a test.mes nt to his innovative genius.

The present work is what Calder describes as a stabile, which contains within its form an implication of movement. As the artist once commented, “the mobile has actual movement in itself, while the stabile is back at the old painting idea of implied movement.” (Alexander Calder cited Katharine Kuh, ‘Alexander Calder’, The Artist's Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists, New York 1962, p. 42) The faces invite the viewer to turn the piece around, watching the two profiles appear and disappear in a theatrical experience. The artist had always been preoccupied with theatre and sought to stage a drama or ballet consisting of moving sculptural elements. Calder collaborated and worked on several theatrical productions, expanding the context in which sculpture is seen and encountered.

The significance of maquettes in Calder’s artistic output cannot be overstated. Calder dedicated the last two decades of his life to creating large-scale sculptures, making over three hundred monumental pieces designed for the outdoors. For example, monumental works such as Teodelapio (1962) and Object in Five Planes (1965) were also developed from maquettes. Calder considered the maquettes not only as preparatory works for their final large-scale versions, but as works in their own right, stating that: “even in aluminium and very small, at the model stage, the object must please whether it is intended to be made in large dimensions, or not” (Calder cited in: Maurice Bruzeau, Calder à Saché, Paris 1973, p. 48 ). His use of maquettes also evolved over t.mes , as he began creating multiple or intermediate maquettes as the scale of his work increased. Maquettes as viable sculpture was a notion celebrated by Calder. To this end, A Two-Faced Guy is not only a par exemplar of Calder’s working process, but also a wondrous representation of the artist’s deep exploration of sculpture’s performative potential, executed in an ever-shifting play of form and light.