Black Cascade: 12 Verticals
Artist
Alexander Calder
(American, 1898-1976)
Date1959
CultureAmerican
MediumPainted black metal and wire
ClassificationSculpture
Provenance(Perls Galleries, New York, New York, 1965); purchased by the John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, 1965-present.
Credit LineGift of Friends of Art of the Ringling Museum, 1965
Object numberSN5483
Alexander Calder was born in Philadelphia and earned a degree in mechanical engineering before pursuing a career as an artist in 1923, when he enrolled in the Art Students League in New York. Early in his career, he experimented with wire as a sculptural medium, creating figures that he would hang from his own suspension designs, representing acrobats in his 1927 work, Circus. From this project was born his fascination with mobiles, designs which allowed sculpture to move. Calder created mobiles of abstract compositions, which he suspended either from the ceiling or from an armature, allowing his forms to move freely in space. This work, comprised of repeated geometric forms shaped from black metal and suspended from wire, creates unpredictable patterns of movement, thereby challenging the notion of sculpture as a static art form.
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Max Weldy
