Calder: Sculpting Time @ Museo d’Arte della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano
Calder has undoubtedly left a permanent mark within the history of contemporary art. By introducing movement into the sculptural medium, the artist has given a temporal dimension to his work. As the wires in the works by Calder are not welded, the sculptures are allowed to move within their limits and according to the surrounding draft of air. The constant movement or the momentary stillness of the pieces characterise them with constant change, appearing different to every viewer. Calder: Sculpting time is displayed at Lugano’s cultural centre, Lugano Arte e Cultura (LAC) within the allocated museum section, Museo d’Arte della Svizzera Italiana (MASI), Switzerland, and presents a solo exhibition by the artist. Composed entirely by sculptural masterpieces, the large museum space allows the works to create a dialogue amongst each other, whilst still being viewable singularly to the viewer.
Alexander Calder, Calder: Sculpting Time, 2024. Installation View. Photo Courtesy: MASI and LAC Lugano.
This exhibition is considered one of the most complete solo exhibitions of the artist. Following a preparation of almost five year, the over thirty pieces present in the space have been given on loan and transported to the museum form several public and private international institutions, including the Calder Foundation in New York, USA. The display has been curated by Ana Mingot Comenge with the expert eye of Carmen Giménez, president of the board at MASI.
LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura. Outdoor View. Photo Courtesy: Ticino Top Ten.
Founded in 2015, LAC was conceptualised as a place of meeting and dialogue between differing artistic disciplines. Following its opening, this centre has become one of the leading Swiss institutions in contemporary art and had been instated as a point of reference entering the national and international cultural landscape. The 29,000 square meter space is devised amongst a statement entrance hall, a large white wall gallery, a theatre room, event spaces and large outdoor spaces both in the front and at the back of the building. Moreover, the allocated exhibition or museum gallery space is allocated to MASI. Founded the same year as LAC, MASI started as the union between the Cantonal Museum of Art and the Museum of Art of the city of Lugano, both public institutions who have been active for the past decades in the region and Switzerland.
Displayed across the length of first floor, the open space offers an insight on the lifelong creative journey of the artist. Starting form the first abstractive works “sphérique”, the museum guides the visitor across a path of “standing mobile”, hung “mobile” and “stabile”, leading toward the end of the space with one final work. Moreover, concluding the exhibitions, is the largest work of the display, Red Lily Pads, which its poetic placement dialogues with the lake side panorama, viewable from the large window that ends of the structure.
Alexander Calder, Calder: Sculpting Time, 2024. Installation View. Photo Courtesy: MASI and LAC Lugano.
Red Lily Pads, on loan from the Guggenheim Collection, encompasses Calder’s gravitation towards naturalistic forms, prioritising the abstraction of flora and fauna over celestial motifs. Similar to the Surrealist painters with whom he frequently collaborated, Calder was drawn to organic shapes and coincidental connections. The work’s oval discs are arranged in transient patterns parallel to the water or earth level, resembling leaves floating upon the water's surface.
Alexander Calder, Red Lily Pads (Nénuphars rouges), 1956. Painted sheet metal and metal rods. 3 feet 6 inches x 14 feet 6 inches x 8 feet 5 inches (106.7 x 442 x 256.5 cm). Photo Courtesy: The Guggenheim Collection, New York.
Another mobile from the same collection, Arc of Petals, is displayed. Arranged as an antigravitational cascade, with little, undifferentiated small components as symbols of new growth, dipping and rocking below larger shapes swaying at the top, the work expresses affinity with organic elements. Contrasting the other painted surfaces, the artist has left one leaf unpainted, exposing the aluminium surface and highlighting the sense of variation he believed was essential to an artwork’s success.
Alexander Calder, Calder: Sculpting Time, 2024. Installation View, Arc of Petals in the forefront. Photo Courtesy: MASI and LAC Lugano.
Alexander Calder, born in 1898 in Pennsylvania, USA, to artist parents – his mother a painter and father a sculptor – who travelled the country across their numerous commissions. His parents provided him with workshop from the age of eight and throughout his childhood, encouraging Calder to produce since a young age. His earlies creative constructions were characterised by bras sheets and bent metal wire and already showed signs of simple movements. However, Calder initially pursued an engineering degree at the Stevens Institute of Technology, where in 1919 following graduation he returned to the family profession. In 1923 he committed to the creative vocation, enrolling in fine art classes and moved to New York. During his studies the artist completed several jobs, amongst which he illustrated circus sketches for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1925 (reed previous article). Following, Calder developed a lifelong fascination with the circus, in 1926, he produced Cirque Calder, an intricate unique collection of works. The work incorporated little metal wired figures – such as actors, animals and circus equipment – which were intended to be physically operated. The artist travelled with the small sculptural work and successfully debuted his “performance” in Paris, predating performance art by almost forty years.
His fascination with movement led his across his career to establish the minimalistic sculptures typically finished in primary colour, in addition to the use of black and white. Throughout the 20th century Calder met influential figures – Joan Miró, Ferdinand Léger, Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp and Piet Mondrian – which inspired him and whose influences are visible in his works. 1931 marked a turning point for Calder, by creating his first kinetic sculpture.
Alexander Calder (1898-1976) holding a model version of a mobile to be hung in the arrivals building of Idlewild International Airport, New York, 1957. Photo Courtesy: Walter Sanders for Time and Life pictures, Getty Images.
“(One) cannot see, or even conceive of a thing form all points of view simultaneously…Therefore, to finish a work one must approximate.”
Through a narrow focus, Calder: Sculpting Time examines the deep and transformational influence of one of the most innovative artists of the 20th century. Starting from the artist’s early explorations of “light-weight” sculptures that took close inspiration by Marcel Duchamp’s “mobiles” – French for “motion” – or small sculptural compositions which movement was powered by motors. Followed closely by Calder’s realisation a motor was not necessary for his works to evolve and created “stabiles” – term coined by Jean Arp – that appeared more static and would naturally sway with the currents in the air. The experimentation with volumes and voids, with the addition of a fourth dimension – time – characterise how Alexander Calder’s has transformed our understanding and interaction with sculpture.
Alexander Calder, Calder: Sculpting Time, 2024. Installation View. Photo Courtesy: MASI and LAC Lugano.
The works exhibited at MASI vary from small to large scale compositions and features his famous hung works, standing sculptures and “constellations”. The constellations started in 1943, caused by World War II, from the scarcity of large metal plates, the artist was constrained and shifted to the incorporation of wood within the metal wire. Therefore, the collection of exhibited works –from 1930 to 1960 – highlight in one location Alexander Calder’s most inventive and productive years of his creative career. Across Calder’s lifetime, he created sculptural works verging from mantel pieces to large-scale land-art commissions. The unique sculptural works clearly reference his peers and acquaintances of the time, from the use of primary colours in addition to black and white, referencing Piet Mondrian, to the use of motors to move his early creations, inspired by Marcel Duchamp, and the composition of biomorphic abstract shapes, developed simultaneously alongside Jean Arp.
Finally, MASI at LAC bring to life a retrospective exhibition, displaying the genius mind of the artist by displaying the key works exploring the fourth dimension of twentieth century sculpture.
The solo exhibition featuring the works by Alexander Calder, Sculpting Time is on display at the Museo d’Arte della Svizzera Italiana (MASI) in the cultural centre of Lugano Arte e Cultura (LAC) in Lugano, Switzerland until 6 October 2024.
Grace Jamieson Bianciardi
Reviews Editor, MADE IN BED