Flying Colors
Date 1973
Media
Specially formulated aerospace paint on DC 8-62 airplane
Dimensions
157' long
Flying Colors makes its inaugural flight from Dallas Love Field to Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City—where the Calders disembark—before continuing to Washington D.C., Miami, and Latin America.
Friends on board with the Calders include Ruth and Leonard Horwich, Jean Lipman, Dorothy Miller, Nancy Mulnix, Elodie and Robert Osborn, Andi Schlitz, and Leslie and Rufus Stillman; family members include the Calders’ daughter Mary, who is joined by husband Howard and sons Holton and Alexander, and Calder’s sister, Peggy.
Prompted by Calder’s project with Braniff International Airways to paint a DC-8 jet, French auctioneer and racecar driver Hervé Poulain commissions Calder to design the first-ever BMW Art Car. After construction, testing, and maintenance, the car is painted in 1975.
In 1963, Calder completed construction of a large studio overlooking the Indre Valley. With the assistance of a full-scale, industrial ironworks, he began to fabricate his monumental works in France and devoted much of his later working years to public commissions. Calder died in New York in 1976 at the age of seventy-eight.
