Calder Foundation

Abstraction

Date 1932
Media
Ink and gouache on paper
Dimensions
20 3⁄4" × 28 3⁄4"
Collection
Galerie Hopkins Custot, Paris
Chronology  1
28 February–31 March 1934

The First Municipal Art Exhibition, Radio City, Rockefeller Center, New York, exhibits three works by Calder, including a drawing titled Abstraction, and a standing mobile.

Works / Work on Paper 274
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.”