Calder designs staging and costumes for OO to AH (A00160, A00159), a playlet in two scenes written by Charles Tracy but never performed. (CF, project file; Tracy, "OO to AH")

23 February-13 March: Calder's first large-scale bolted stabiles, Devil Fish and Big Bird are on view in "Stabiles and Mobiles" at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York. (CF, exhibition file)

15 April: The Calders sail for Europe, ultimately landing at Le Havre, France. (CF, passport; Calder 1966, 156)

Late April: Nelson and his wife, Francine, invite the Calders to stay with them in Varengeville, on the Normandy coast. Leger, Pierre Matisse, and his wife, Teeny also visit. (Calder 1966, 156-157)

Late April or early May: The Calders return to Paris, where they move to 80 boulevard Arago, to a house designed by Nelson and owned by Calder's friend Alden Brooks. Visitors include Finnish architect Alvar Aalto and his wife, Aino. Calder uses the garage, outfitted with an automotive turntable, as a studio. (Calder 1966, 157-158)

May: Calder and Miro visit the Spanish Pavilion under construction at the 1937 World's Fair site in Paris. Calder meets the pavilion's architects, Jose Luis Sert and Luis Lacasa. Sert eventually commissions Calder to make Mercury Fountain for the Spanish Pavilion. Mined from Almaden in Spain, the mercury symbolizes Republican resistance to fascism. (Calder 1966, 158; Freedberg 1986, 504-505)

Summer: The Calders rent a house in Varengeville, where Calder uses the garage as his studio. Among the visitors to the house French painters Georges Braque and Pierre Loeb; art journalist and critic Myfanwy Evans; British sculptor Barbara Hepworth; Miro; the Nelsons; British painters Ben Nicholson and John Piper; and cultural theorist Herbert Read. (Calder 1966, 162-163)

3 June: Calder performs Cirque Calder at 80 boulevard Arago, Paris. (Bruguiere Collection, Paris, circus invitation)

12 July: The Spanish Pavilion, featuring Picasso's Guernica, Miro's Reaper, and Calder's Mercury Fountain, opens at the Paris World's Fair. (CF, exhibition file)

21 October: The Calders arrive in Folkstone, England, later renting an apartment at Belsize Park, London. Calder establishes a studio in Camden Town and gives Cirque Calder performances. (CF, passport; Calder 1966, 164-165)