Cirque de Calder
Alexander Calder was born to a painter and sculptor who encouraged him to do something ‘safer’ with his life. After receiving a degree in mechanical engineering and working jobs at a logging camp in Canada and in the boiler room of a steam ship, he soon found his contentment lie elsewhere. He moved to New York to become an artist. Among his first inspirations were the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circuses. This would lead to the creation of his traveling Cirque de Calder and introduced him to the materials and forms that served him throughout his life.
Calder is most famous for his mobiles. Early forms of these kinetic sculptures were motorized. Later he came to realize that movement was most expressive when driven only by the wind. He often remarked that the balance in his sculpture, in the systems and forms he used came from an observation he made while traveling between New York and San Francisco while working on the steam ship…
“It was early one morning on a calm sea, off Guatemala, when over my couch — a coil of rope — I saw the beginning of a fiery red sunrise on one side and the moon looking like a silver coin on the other.”
