Archive

Quadrangle Press publishes Selected Fables with etchings by Calder. Jean de La Fontaine is editor.

Calder exhibits his work at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Washington, D.C.

Calder meets Burgess Meredith, who later visits the Calders in Roxbury to discuss making a film about Calder and his mobiles. Calder suggests Matter as the cinematographer.

Calder accepts Mindlin’s invitation to visit Brazil.

For the XXIV Biennale di Venezia—the first Biennale of the postwar period—Calder’s Arc of Petals is included in a presentation of Peggy Guggenheim’s collection curated by art historian Giulio Carlo Argan.

The Calders drive to the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Reno, and Lake Tahoe, where they spend two weeks with Kenneth and Peggy Hayes. After driving to Berkeley, they leave Sandra and Mary with the Hayes family, and fly to Los Angeles.

Louisa’s mother, Louisa Cushing James, dies.

Calder and Louisa arrive in Mexico City, where they stay at the Hotel Prince. They visit with Fernando Gamboa, director of the Museo de Bellas Artes, and with filmmaker Luis Buñuel and his family.

Calder and Louisa arrive in Panama. I insisted on taking Louisa in a taxi to Panama City, to see the crazy traffic and open buildings I had seen sixteen years before, when a fireman on the S.S. Alexander.

Calder and Louisa arrive in Trinidad.

From Trinidad, the Calders fly to Belém, Brazil. On the plane they meet writer John Dos Passos.

Calder and Louisa arrive in Rio de Janeiro.

Museu de Arte, São Paulo, Brazil, presents “Alexander Calder.”

The Calders throw a farewell party before departing Rio de Janeiro. Calder improvises decorations and hangs them on the wall. Heitor Dos Praceres (Hector of the Pleasures), a Negro painter and friend of ours, had an excellent samba band, so we decided that they should come sixteen strong …The party took place

The Calders embark from Rio de Janeiro for the United States.

In Berkeley, Calder and Louisa are reunited with their children. The family spends a week with the Hayes family before driving back across country with side trips to Sante Fe, New Mexico, and Texas.

Buchholz Gallery/Curt Valentin, New York, presents “Alexander Calder Recent Mobiles, 1948.”

Calder exhibits a work on paper in “A Comparison of Primitive and Modern: 40,000 Years of Modern Art” at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.

Calder creates mobiles for Symphonic Variations, choreographed by Tatiana Leskova with music by César Franck. The dance is performed in Rio de Janeiro.

Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, presents “Do Figurativismo ao Abstracionismo” and includes five works by Calder.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, presents “Calder & Sculpture Today,” with works by Jean Arp, Alexander Archipenko, Constantin Brancusi, Calder, and Alberto Giacometti, among others.

Buchholz Gallery/Curt Valentin, New York, exhibits “Calder.” The catalogue includes “The Studio of Alexander Calder” by Masson and illustrations by Calder of the objects exhibited.

Happy As Larry, a play written by Donagh MacDonagh and directed by Burgess Meredith with sets by Calder, opens in New York at the Coronet Theatre.

In Paris, the Calders rent an apartment for four months on rue Penthièvre from their friend, Médé Valentine.

The Calders travel around France visiting the caves of Lascaux, and Ritou Nitzschke and André Bac in La Roche Jaune, Brittany.

The Calders leave Paris and take a train to Antwerp. From there, the family takes a Finnish ship Arcturus to Helsinki.

The Calders visit Maire Gullichsen, who takes them to her villa, Mairea, in Norrmark for a week. From there, one day, we took a five-hour trip to see the Bjoerkenheims, who have one of the few remaining big farms in the north of Finland.

The Calders leave from Turku, Finland, and take a boat to Stockholm, arriving the next day. They stay in the Grand Hotel and visit Eric Grate, a Swedish sculptor.

Departing Malmö, Sweden, the Calders take a train through Denmark and Germany, and arrive in Paris.

The Calders depart Paris for Antwerp, set sail the next day on the Europa, and arrive in New York.

Calder is selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best children’s book illustrators of the last fifty years.

After two years of production, Works of Calder previews at the Museum of Modern Art. The film was directed by Matter and produced and narrated by Burgess Meredith, with music by John Cage.

Calder participates in a symposium, “What Abstract Art Means to Me,” at the Museum of Modern Art in conjunction with their exhibition “Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America.” The idea of detached bodies floating in space, of different sizes and densities, perhaps of different

Calder performs Cirque Calder at the Sert’s home in Lattingtown, New York.

Institute of Contemporary Arts, Washington, D.C., exhibits “Sculptures by Alexander Calder.”

In Washington, D.C., Calder sees Jean Davidson, a friend he had first met in 1944, and invites him to visit Roxbury.

Calder presents Cirque Calder in Roxbury.

Cage’s score for Works of Calder wins first prize at the Art Film Festival in Woodstock.

Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, presents “Calder–Miró.”

Calder arrives in Paris and stays with Paul Nelson.

I must have met Henri Pichette at lunch with Giacometti in Paris. Now he wanted me to decorate his new play: Nucléa

Calder and Louisa attend the opening of Nucléa at the Théâtre du Palais de Chaillot, Paris. Directed by Jean Vilar with music by Maurice Jarre, the play is performed by Théâtre National Populaire.

Galerie Maeght, Paris, exhibits “Alexander Calder: Mobiles.”

Louisa flies from Paris to New York. Calder leaves Paris on 30 May and arrives in Italy to prepare his works for the XXVI Biennale di Venezia.

Calder returns to Paris.

Calder flies from Paris and arrives in New York.

Calder performs Cirque Calder in Roxbury.

Calder arrives in Bonn on 10 September with an invitation from the German State Department to tour West Germany. After two days he travels to Munich, where he meets Bruno Werner, a journalist who reviewed his first Berlin exhibition in 1929. He continues on to Mannheim and

Calder stays in Berlin.

Calder travels to Hamburg, where he meets the dealer Rudolf Hoffmann. He then goes on to Hanover, Bremen, and Cologne before returning to Bonn.

Calder flies from Bonn to New York.

Galerie la Hune, Paris, exhibits “Permanence du Cirque.” The exhibition commemorates the publication of a book by the same title, which includes an essay by Calder, “Voici une petite histoire de mon cirque.”

Calder presents Cirque Calder in Washington, D.C.; Jean invites “what seemed half of Washington, D.C., to see it.”

At the suggestion of John Cage, American composer Earle Brown travels to Roxbury to meet Calder. Pierre Boulez joins him.

Calder performs Cirque Calder in the Roxbury studio.

Frank Perls Gallery, Beverly Hills, exhibits “Alexander Calder Mobiles,” previously shown at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, from 22 March–19 April.

The Calder family arrives at Le Havre after an eight-day voyage on the Flandre. Also on board is Ernest Hemingway. He appeared suddenly and I presented myself, but it was not much use. For I had nothing to say to him and he had nothing to say to me. And that went for Louisa too.

The Calders visit Jean Davidson in the Loire Valley. Jean has purchased a mill house Moulin Vert, in the tiny town of Saché.

Daughter Sandra goes to live in Paris.

Calder leaves Aix for Paris to begin filming Cirque de Calder, directed by Jean Painlevé.

Calder visits Jean and sees his renovated mill house in Saché. Calder agrees to a trade of three mobiles for François Premier, a dilapidated seventeenth-century stone house built adjoining a cliff on Jean’s property.

Calder rigs a studio in Jean’s mill and creates the mobiles. Through the winter, Jean organizes the renovation of François Premier and converts the wagon shed into a studio. A second small building across the street serves as the “gouacherie,” a painting studio.

Calder plans a trip to Beirut to visit his friend Henri Seyrig and to make the mobile commissioned by Middle East Airlines.

The Calder family travels on the Greek steamship Aurelia from Marseilles to Greece, where they spend the day in Athens.

The Calders stop in Alexandria, Egypt.

The Calders arrive in Beirut after a stop in Limassol, Cyprus. They reside with the Seyrigs for a month, visiting Syria and Jordan by car.

American University, Beirut, exhibits works Calder made during the last month.

The Calder family visits Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

The Calders leave Beirut by plane and return to Aix.

Calder leaves Paris, traveling through Amsterdam to Hanover, where an exhibition of his work is scheduled to open at the Kestnergesellschaft.

Kestnergesellschaft exhibits “Alexander Calder: Stabiles, Mobiles, Gouaches.”

Calder returns to Paris.

Louisa and daughter Mary sail from Le Havre to New York.

Calder flies from Paris to New York; daughter Sandra remains in France.

The renovation of François Premier is completed.