40 Fun Facts About Alexander Calder

Which carmaker's Art Car series began in 1975 when Alexander Calder painted a racer bound for Le Mans?

BMW got its first Art Car when Calder painted a 3.0 CSL for his friend, the French racing driver Hervé Poulain. Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein later painted cars for the same series.

Before turning to art, Alexander Calder earned a 1919 degree in which subject at a New Jersey college?

Mechanical engineering was his choice because his artist parents did not want him to follow them into art. He later admitted he was not sure what the term meant when he signed up.

Finding motors monotonous, Alexander Calder made hanging mobiles that are moved by what instead?

Air currents, or a light touch, set his hanging sculptures turning from about 1932. With no motor fixing the pattern, the movement became far less predictable.

What flows through the fountain Alexander Calder built for Spain's pavilion at the 1937 world's fair?

Mercury runs through it in honor of Almadén, a Spanish mining region that had been besieged by Franco's troops. The fountain now sits behind glass in Barcelona because the vapor is toxic.

Alexander Calder's 25-foot stabile Bent Propeller stood for three decades outside which New York landmark?

World Trade Center towers rose beside it until September 11, 2001, when the sculpture was crushed under falling rubble. Only about 40 percent of it was ever recovered.

Which president gave Alexander Calder a posthumous Medal of Freedom at a ceremony his family boycotted?

Gerald Ford gave the award ten days before leaving office, two months after the sculptor died. The family stayed away to press for an amnesty for wartime draft resisters.

The stabile trophy Alexander Calder designed for the National Magazine Awards is shaped like which animal?

An elephant gives the award its nickname, the Ellie. Calder's earliest known sculpture, modeled in clay when he was a small boy, was the same animal.

Which bird names the 53-foot Alexander Calder stabile unveiled in Chicago's Federal Plaza in 1974?

Flamingo was the first artwork commissioned under the federal Percent for Art program. Chicago declared its unveiling day Alexander Calder Day and marked it with a circus parade.

Which French artist coined the name mobiles in 1931 for Alexander Calder's first motor-driven sculptures?

Marcel Duchamp chose the word as a French pun, since it can mean both something that moves and a motive. He later helped organize a 1943 New York retrospective of the sculptures.

In which city, home since 2025 to the museum Calder Gardens, was Alexander Calder born in 1898?

Philadelphia is also where his grandfather and father, both sculptors named Alexander, made their best-known public works. Art by all three generations lines one of its parkways.

Alexander Calder's grandfather sculpted the 37-foot statue of which colonial founder atop a city hall?

William Penn's statue was cast in 14 sections by Alexander Milne Calder. For decades an unwritten agreement kept every building in the city below the brim of its hat.

Which material did Alexander Calder bend into portraits and animals, a technique called drawing in space?

Wire let him trace a whole figure with a single line. Calder is credited with inventing this kind of sculpture while living in France in the 1920s.

Which color is so closely tied to Alexander Calder's giant steel stabiles that a shade of it carries his name?

Red in a bright vermilion shade, now nicknamed after Calder, covers many of his outdoor giants. He chose it for one Illinois plaza so the steel would stand out against dark office towers.

Alexander Calder showed in a 1955 exhibition at Galerie Denise René, a landmark for which branch of modern art?

Kinetic art is art in which real motion is part of the work, and Calder's mobiles are among its best-known examples. The same show included the motor-driven machines of Jean Tinguely.

Which New York institution ran a public fundraising drive in 1982 to keep Alexander Calder's miniature circus?

Whitney Museum supporters raised more than a million dollars in about two weeks, because Calder's estate had to sell the circus to settle taxes. The museum also holds the largest body of his work.

Alexander Calder's largest sculpture, an 85-foot steel giant, stands beside a soccer stadium in which capital?

Mexico City received it for the 1968 Olympics, one of 19 artworks along a Route of Friendship. It rises beside the Estadio Azteca, where fans have reportedly mistaken it for a public urinal.

Alexander Calder designed poster prints protesting which war?

Vietnam War opposition outlived him: in 1977 his family skipped a White House ceremony held in his honor to call for an amnesty for draft resisters.

By which nickname, also used by the grandson who founded the Calder Foundation, was Alexander Calder known?

Sandy was what classmates called him, and his college yearbook praised his constant mischievous grin. His grandson Alexander Rower, who set up the foundation in 1987, goes by the same name.

A 1930 visit to which Dutch painter's studio shocked Alexander Calder into making fully abstract art?

Piet Mondrian had arranged his studio like one large artwork, and it impressed Calder so much that he gave up figures for pure shapes. Within a year he was making abstract sculptures that moved.

Which Michigan city has an Alexander Calder stabile in its official logo, on a plaza locals named for him?

Grand Rapids received the first public artwork funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, in 1969. Its French title, La Grande Vitesse, means the great swiftness, a play on the city's name.

In which state did Alexander Calder and his wife buy the Roxbury farmhouse where they raised two daughters?

Connecticut became home in 1933 after his years in France, and he made his first outdoor sculptures there a year later. He later kept a second studio in the French village of Saché.

For which Spanish painter and lifelong friend did Alexander Calder set a shard of porcelain in a brass ring?

Joan Miró was one of the avant-garde artists Calder befriended in France. The fountain Calder built for the 1937 world's fair is now displayed at the Barcelona foundation named after his friend.

Alexander Calder's pen-and-ink drawings of animals illustrated a 1931 edition of which classic book?

Aesop's Fables came out the same year Calder's sculpture turned abstract. His prints soon followed, with thin lines tracing geometric shapes in place of figures.

A wartime shortage of which metal led Alexander Calder to carve the wooden sculptures called constellations?

Aluminum was scarce during World War II, so Calder returned to carving wood. The result was a new, open form of sculpture, and it led to the wall-mounted towers he devised in 1951.

Which Dallas-based airline hired Alexander Calder in the 1970s to paint a full-size jet as a flying canvas?

Braniff got its jet after Calder first turned down the adman behind the idea, thinking he was being asked to paint a toy. Told it was a real airliner he agreed, and a second jet followed for the US Bicentennial.

Alexander Calder's 1958 standing mobile Spirale was made for the headquarters of which United Nations agency?

UNESCO received a mobile built on both sides of the Atlantic: the steel base was made in France by the designer Jean Prouvé, and the moving top in the United States.

Alexander Calder's miniature circus crossed the Atlantic and later reached a museum packed inside five what?

Suitcases were enough because most of the performers stand only about six inches tall. Calder worked them by hand while kneeling on the floor, as an assistant played records for the music.

Which artist named Alexander Calder's motionless abstract sculptures stabiles, to set them apart from mobiles?

Jean Arp coined the word a year after another artist friend had named the mobiles. Calder's stabiles later grew into steel giants several stories tall.

Which collector wore one Alexander Calder earring and one by Yves Tanguy to open her New York gallery in 1942?

Peggy Guggenheim mismatched the earrings to show equal loyalty to abstract art and Surrealism, which hung in separate rooms. She also commissioned a silver headboard from Calder, hung with dangling fish.

Which French philosopher wrote the catalogue essay for Alexander Calder's 1946 show at Galerie Louis Carré?

Jean-Paul Sartre's essay helped the show make a huge impact in postwar France. Calder had taken several works apart and sent them by mail, despite strict limits on parcel size.

Alexander Calder met his wife Louisa aboard a ship in 1929; she was a grandniece of which American novelist?

Henry James was her great-uncle, and so was his brother, a celebrated Harvard philosopher. Louisa and Calder married in 1931, and she later ran the music at his circus performances.

Alexander Calder designed stage sets for Panorama, a 1935 work by which pioneer of American modern dance?

Martha Graham was one of more than a dozen theater collaborations for Calder. He described some of his stage sets as dancers in their own right, performing a choreography through their rhythmic movement.

Alexander Calder's 40-foot stabile La Grande Voile stands at MIT beside the Green Building, a tower by which architect?

I. M. Pei met Calder to plan a large stabile for the court beside his tower, and donors Eugene and Margaret McDermott paid for it. Its French name means the big sail.

Which Alexander Calder work, installed years after his death, fills the atrium of a US Senate office building?

Mountains and Clouds won Calder's final approval in Washington on November 10, 1976, and he died of a heart attack that same night. Funding cuts then held up the black steel giant for years.

As a timekeeper at what kind of site in Washington state did Alexander Calder write home for paints?

A logging camp near Aberdeen gave him mountain scenery he wanted to paint, so he asked his family for brushes. Soon afterward he moved to New York to become an artist.

At which New York school did Alexander Calder study painting in the 1920s under John Sloan and George Luks?

Art Students League classes overlapped with his work as an illustrator for the National Police Gazette, which sent him to sketch a visiting circus in 1925. The assignment left him fascinated.

Which dancer, a sensation in 1920s France, did Alexander Calder portray in a 1927 sculpture now at MoMA?

Josephine Baker was a new star of the French stage when Calder, himself newly arrived from America, made the portrait. Its title carries the number III because he took her as a subject more than once.

Alexander Calder represented the United States and won the main sculpture prize in 1952 at which art exhibition?

Venice Biennale judges gave him the top sculpture award, confirming an international reputation that had grown since a nearly sold-out solo show in Rio de Janeiro four years earlier.

Alexander Calder's mobile Universe was unveiled in 1974 in the lobby of which Chicago skyscraper?

Sears Tower, now called Willis Tower, got its Calder on the same October day the city unveiled his giant stabile in Federal Plaza. Chicago proclaimed the date Alexander Calder Day.

Alexander Calder's fountain for Spain's 1937 world's fair pavilion was a counterpart to which Picasso painting?

Guernica shared the pavilion, where the Spanish Republic used art to protest the civil war. Both works are now in Spanish museums, the painting in Madrid and the fountain in Barcelona.