Below a wonderful collection of sculptures by Alexander Calder.
Calder is given credit for inventing the moving sculpture. In this clip see some of his mobile artworks.
A few months ago you may remember a post about Ilya Bolotowsky. He was a Russian painter who was abstract in his art. A customer of a Goodwill store came upon a work by Bolotowsky, but didn’t know it. The customer just enjoyed the art! She eventually had the artwork appraised at it was an original work of art by Ilya Bolotowsky. It later sold at auction for $36,000. What a great story!
Another lucky customer of a Goodwill store has come across an art bargain. This time the artist was Alexander Calder, our featured artist of the moment. A teacher named Kathy Mallet was able to find a print by Calder at a Goodwill store and paid $12.34 for it. The work was a lithographic print by Alexander Calder and it sold for $9,000 this past week! Mallet is employed by Georgetown University in their public relations department.
Here is a picture of Kathy Mallet with the artwork she bought using her loyalty card. The original price was $12.99, with her loyalty card the price was taken down to $12.34.
Alexander Calder was born in Lawton, Pennsylvania in the year 1898. His father Alexander Stirling Calder was well known sculptor who was awarded many public commissions. His father was very skilled at working with both the male and female figure. Much of his work was very large in scale, public sized if you will. Below is an sample of his style of sculpture. Stirling Calder passed away in 1945.
Alexander Calder is also known for making many miniature sized figure works out of wire. His goal was to create an entire miniature circus.
In 1902 Calder posed for his father in a sculpture work that is now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The work was titled THE MAN CLUB.
As a child his family lived in Arizona, California, and then back in Philadelphia. Then the artist’s father got a great position as head of sculpture with the Panama Pacific International Exposition. The family would move back and forth between New York and California.
For college the artist attended the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. His bachelor’s degree was in mechanical engineering. For a short time he was a mechanic on a ship that sailed to many exotic locales around the world. For his art skills, he took a job at the National Police Gazette where he was given an assignment to draw the Ringling Brothers circus. This would become a favorite lifelong theme for Calder.
He would move to New York and start taking classes at the Art Students League of New York.
Calder eventually settled in Paris raising two small children. He went on to make wearable art in addition to his paintings and sculptures.
Calder died in 1976 after a well received opening at a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York city.
Price range info: Sculptures can go as much as $4.4 million dollars. Works in gouache can be found in the six figures, less than $120,000. Ink works can be found for $20,000 to $50,000.
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