Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926-1933

In 1926, Alexander Calder (1898–1976) moved from New York to Paris and began to use time and motion as "materials" for animating line and space. Calder’s years in Paris––an understudied part of the artist’s career––is the focus of this marvelous publication. A team of international scholars discusses Calder’s many innovations of this period, chief among them his abstract, motorized, and mobile works. They analyze the extended cast of Calder’s animated Circus, made in Paris between 1926 and 1931, and include previously unpublished photographs by Brassaï and Kertesz of Calder and this beloved performative sculpture. The essays critically explore the intellectual, cultural, and artistic milieu of Paris in the late 1920s and early 1930s and the contexts of Calder’s friendships with Miró, Mondrian, Duchamp, and Man Ray, among others. What emerges in this fascinating book is a nuanced and detailed understanding of how Calder’s distinctive career first took flight.