Calder Foundation

Untitled

Date 1935
Media
Sheet metal and paint
Dimensions
105 1⁄2" × 72" × 41"
Collection
Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester; Gift of Charlotte Whitney Allen, 1964
Historical Photos  1
Chronology  1
Spring 1935

While traveling home from Chicago, Calder stops in Rochester, New York, to see Charlotte Whitney Allen, who commissions a standing mobile for her garden, which had been designed by landscape architect Fletcher Steele.

Works / Standing Mobile 269
Related Timeline
1930–1936 Shift to Abstraction

Following a visit in October of 1930 to Piet Mondrian’s studio, where he was impressed by the environmental installation, Calder made his first wholly abstract compositions and invented the kinetic sculpture now known as the mobile. Coined for these works by Marcel Duchamp in 1931, the word “mobile” refers to both “motion” and “motive” in French. He also created stationary abstract works that Jean Arp dubbed “stabiles.”