Archive

Calder designs scenery and costumes for OO to AH, a playlet in two scenes written by Charles Tracy but never performed.

The Calders obtain visas in New York in preparation for their voyage to Europe.

The Calders depart on the SS Lafayette for Le Havre, France. Their daughter Sandra, aged two, and her caretaker Dorothy Sibley join them.

The Calders arrive in Le Havre, France.

Nelson and his wife, Francine, invite the Calders to stay with them in Varengeville, on the Normandy coast. Léger, Pierre Matisse, and Matisse’s wife, Teeny, also visit.

The Calders return to Paris, where they move to 80 boulevard Arago, 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 and Miró visit the Spanish pavilion under construction at the 1937 World’s Fair site in Paris. Calder meets the pavilion’s architects, Josep Lluís Sert and Luis Lacasa. Sert eventually commissions Calder to make Mercury Fountain for the Spanish pavilion. Mined in Almadén in

Honolulu Academy of Arts, Hawaii, presents “Fantastic Art: Miró and Calder.”

Calder performs Cirque Calder at 80 boulevard Arago, Paris.

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.

While in London, Calder makes his first gold necklace for Louisa.

In reference to the Mayor Gallery exhibition, Calder writes, The show is going quite well . . . Sold 3 objects so far, + a lot of jewelry. Buyers of his jewelry include prominent characters of London society, including Lady Clark, wife of London’s National Gallery director, Kenneth Clark.

An unsigned review of the Mayor Gallery in Vogue declares, Calder . . . occasionally makes jewellery of great charm and originality. He bends and twists gold and silver metal into fantastic and gorgeous patterns, very much in the modern manner. Women of taste should ask to see some at the

The Calders return to New York. They rent a different apartment in the building at 244 East Eighty-sixth Street and Second Avenue where they had previously lived.

Artek Gallery, Helsinki, presents “Alexander Calder: Jewelry.”

The exhibition “III Salão de Maio,” São Paulo, Brazil, includes gouaches and a mobile by Calder.

Calder submits a Plexiglas stabile to a competition sponsored by Röhm and Haas at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The work is exhibited at the Hall of Industrial Science during the New York World’s Fair.

Sert and his wife, Moncha, pay an extended visit to the Calders in Roxbury.

Marian Willard shows an array of Calder’s jewelry to Valentina, a renowned haute couture dressmaker in New York. Valentina objects to the prices of the items and Willard takes them next to Harper’s Bazaar where they are photographed.

A private exhibition of Calder’s sculptures takes place inside and outside the home of Wallace Harrison and his wife, Ellen, in Huntington, Long Island.

Carmel Snow, the legendary editor of Harper’s Bazaar, writes to Willard: The photographs of Sandy Calder’s jewelry turned out beautifully . . . we will publish these either in December or January.

“Alexander Calder: Mobiles / Jewelry” and “Fernand Léger: Gouaches / Drawings” are presented at the Arts and Crafts Club of New Orleans. Twenty-five works of jewelry are exhibited.

“Calder: Mobiles, Stabiles, Jewelry” and “A Few Paintings by Paul Klee” are on view at the Design Project, Los Angeles. Sent along with the jewelry is an inventory book with illustrations by Calder of each piece.

Following the success of the previous year, Willard planned a second jewelry show. As she wrote to Calder, I am a little concerned about the lack of “jewels” on the horizon at present . . . You will have to do prodigious work the next two months. Remember the small, well

Calder performs Cirque Calder at the Sweeneys’ apartment at 120 East End Avenue in New York.

Calder sends jewelry to Charlotte Whitney Allen in Rochester, who plans to display it for the Christmas season. The jewelry is here and it is too beautiful. I hope we will sell a lot and make our everlasting fortune. We can’t find any list of pieces. Was there one in the box or will you send it later.

Ellen Harrison asks Calder if he is interested in exhibiting his jewelry in Washington, D.C.: Everyone is in Washington these days and there is nothing to by [sic]. I wonder if you would like to show your jewelry if a decent place for such an exhibit could be found? . . . I will ask around if you

Elizabeth Rockwell, owner of the Outlines Gallery in Pittsburgh, writes to Calder: Starting on November 16 there is an exhibit of modern prints, woodcuts, etchings, lithographs, etc.—and I am wondering whether I might show some of your jewelry concurrently with this exhibit.

“Mobiles by Alexander Calder, Stabiles and Jewelry” is held at the San Francisco Museum of Art. Eighty pieces of jewelry are exhibited: The “jewels” fashioned from odd pieces of metal and rocks are an adventure.

At her request, Calder sends Charlotte Whitney Allen an inventory book of the jewelry he has sent her. It is an illustrated list of each work sent drawn in a composition notebook. She thanks him in a letter for the “most explicit list” and writes that the window display of his jewelry

Calder sends thirty-five works of jewelry to Rockwell of the Outlines Gallery for inclusion in a group exhibition. An illustrated list of works accompanies the shipment.

Willard Gallery, New York, exhibits “Calder Jewelry.” After setting up the exhibition the previous day, Calder returns briefly to Roxbury on the morning of 8 December to pick up Louisa and bring her to New York for the show’s vernissage. Upon his arrival, Louisa informs him that the

Calder sends thirty-four works of jewelry that have recently been returned to him from his exhibitions in California to Ellen Harrison in Washington, D.C.

Calder meets artist Saul Steinberg.

After several months with his jewelry, Rockwell of Outlines Gallery writes, Tomorrow the jewelry will be packed and sent. I would like to keep it even longer but unfortunately there seems no hope of selling more . . . I am sorry to hear that your recent exhibits have not been very successful

In regard to the jewelry sent from Calder the previous winter, Ellen Harrison writes, I hated to send you back your . . . things without removing even one piece last winter. Well let’s forget that one.

“Calder: Recent Work” is held at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York.

Calder performs Cirque Calder at Herbert and Mercedes Matter’s apartment, 328 East Forty-second Street, New York.

The first issue of VVV, a Surrealist journal founded and edited by David Hare in collaboration with editorial advisers Breton and Max Ernst, is published. The issue features two Matter photographs of Calder’s Roxbury property. Written below the photographs:
In our days the aviary of all

Calder is classified 1-A (top eligibility) by the army, though he is never drafted. He studies industrial camouflage at New York University and applies for a commission in camouflage work with the Marine Corps: Although the army says that the painter is of little or no use in modern

The Calders move to 255 East Seventy-second Street. After housing Luis Buñuel and his family at 244 East Eighty-sixth Street, the Calders eventually signed over the lease to them.

“Artists for Victory: An Exhibition of Contemporary American Art” is presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Calder wins fourth prize. Other prizewinners include de Creeft and Philip Evergood who are interviewed with Calder at the museum for a WABC Radio

Art of This Century, New York, hosts “Exhibition of Collage,” including works by Arp, Braque, Calder, Joseph Cornell, Duchamp, Ernst, Robert Motherwell, and Picasso.

“Calder: Constellationes” is shown at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York.

“17 Mobiles by Alexander Calder” is held at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts. The catalogue contains a statement by Calder: At first [my] objects were static, seeking to give a sense of cosmic relationship. Then . . . I introduced flexibility, so that the relationships

Calder performs Cirque Calder in the Roxbury studio. Yves Tanguy assists.

Calder writes to Sweeney about his forthcoming retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. I forgot to show you this object. One swings the red (iron) ball in a small circle—this movement and the inertia of the rod and the length of thread develops a very complicated

Calder gives two performances of Cirque Calder in the Members Room of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, for friends and staff.

Peggy Guggenheim presents “Natural, Insane, Surrealist Art” at Art of This Century, New York. Organized with Ladislas Segy, the exhibition features two works by Calder, as well as works by Ernst, Klee, Masson, Roberto Matta, Miró, and Tanguy, among others.

Calder travels to Chicago to prepare for his exhibition of jewelry at the Arts Club.

The Arts Club of Chicago exhibits “Jewelry by Alexander Calder.”

Agnes Rindge Claflin writes and narrates Alexander Calder: Sculpture and Constructions, a film based on the retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Cinematography is by Matter.

Calder visits Mondrian in the hospital shortly after he lapses into a coma. Calder is among those present—with Richter, Dudensing, Sweeney, and others—when Mondrian dies at 5:08 a.m.

Calder attends Mondrian’s memorial service at the Universal Chapel at Lexington Avenue and Fifty-second Street, New York.

Calder’s Black Flower is loaned by the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., to “Calder: Paintings, Mobiles, Stabiles and Jewelry,” held at the local gallery France Forever. Calder attends the preview on 26 March, organized under the patronage of Henri Hoppenot, Minister

In New York, Calder meets Brazilian architect Henrique Mindlin.

The Calders live in the Tanguy-Sage household in Woodbury, Connecticut, while the burned home is repaired. Nitzschke made some very nice plans for the rebuilding + enlargement of the shop, but we are still awaiting …. In the kitchen [the] partition between it + the dining room has

Curt Valentin publishes Three Young Rats and Other Rhymes, with eighty-five drawings by Calder and edited by Sweeney.

Calder is represented by a work on paper in the exhibition “Abstract and Surrealist Art in the United States” at the San Francisco Museum of Art.

The exhibition “Recent Work by Alexander Calder” at Buchholz Gallery/Curt Valentin, New York, includes recent plaster and bronze sculptures and the drawings for Three Young Rats and Other Rhymes.

Buchholz Gallery/Curt Valentin, New York, presents “Recent Work by American Sculptors” and includes a standing mobile by Calder.

Calder receives a contract from composer Remi Gassmann on behalf of the University of Chicago for the design of costumes and scenery for the dance project Billy Sunday.

Masson brings French author and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre to visit Calder in Roxbury.

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, presents the First Exhibition of the Museum Collection of Painting and Sculpture. Calder is represented by five sculptures.