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INTRODUCTION
Alexander Sandy Calder (1898-1976) was born in Lawnton, Pennsylvania (near Philadelphia) and grew up
in a household steeped in art. His mother, Nanette Lederer Calder, was a portrait painter who studied art in
Paris and Philadelphia. His father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was a noted sculptor who created many public
monuments in Philadelphia. Sandy Calders
grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder, also a
sculptor, designed the statue of William Penn
atop Philadelphias City Hall.
Sandy Calder created his first sculpture, a clay
elephant, in 1902, at age 4. He soon developed
an interest in tools and in constructing toys and
other objects, and went on to earn a college
degree in mechanical engineering in 1919. After
trying an assortment of jobs, Calder decided to
become an artist and began studying painting
at the Art Students League in New York in 1923.
In 1926, after working as an illustrator in New
York, he traveled to Paris (then the capital of
the art world), where he would live for much of
the rest of his life. He began building mixed
media kinetic toys, which he exhibited in art
galleries in Paris and New York. Calder used
some of the same materials and techniques for
his early sculptures as for the toys, crafting
them in wire and wood. In 1933, Calder and his
wife returned to the United States and
purchased a farmhouse in Roxbury,
Connecticut. He set up an art studio in the
icehouse on the property. In the late 1930s,
Calder started using sheets of metal,
connected by large bolts, to create organic
forms. His career as a public artist began during
World War II, when he received several
important commissions.
In Paris in 1930, Calder began experimenting in abstract art and concentrating on mobiles, the type of
sculpture for which he would become best known. The French artist Marcel Duchamp first used the term
mobile to describe Calders works. In French the word indicates both moveable and motive, a double
meaning Calder liked.
In his last years, Calder devoted himself to large outdoor sculptures. Many take the form of stabiles, a term
coined by another French artist-friend of Calder, Jean Arp. Stabiles are self-supporting and immovable. They
often take forms that suggest abstracted plants, animals, and insects.
Calder typically worked out the design for these large sculptures by creating small maquettes or models.
First, Calder fabricated the maquettes in his Connecticut studio. He then turned over the production of the
monumental artwork to a factory, most often Etablissements, Bimont in Tours, France. The research
department of the factory would scale the piece to its full-size, then boilermakers would fabricate the
actual work in metal, under Calders supervision. Stabiles such as Flamingo were made of carbon steel.
2. If you happened to walk through Federal Plaza and encountered Flamingo, how would you react to it?
Would you find it friendly? Intimidating? Scary? Explain.
3. How does Calders sculpture relate to the surrounding buildings? How does it relate to the public space
of Federal Plaza?
4. What would the plaza look and feel like without it?