MASTERPIECES VI GALERIE THOMAS MASTERPIECES VI MASTERPIECES VI GALERIE THOMAS CONTENTS ALEXANDER CALDER UNTITLED 1966 6 MAX ERNST LES PEUPLIERS 1939 18 SAM FRANCIS UNTITLED 1964/ 1965 28 ERICH HECKEL BRICK FACTORY 1908 AND HOUSES NEAR ROME 1909 38 PARK OF DILBORN 191 4 50 ALEXEJ VON JAWLENSKY HEAD OF A WOMAN c. 191 3 58 ABSTRACT HEAD: EARLY LIGHT c. 1920 66 4 WIFREDO LAM UNTITLED 1966 76 MAX LIEBERMANN THE GARDEN IN WANNSEE ... 191 7 86 OTTO MUELLER TW O NUDE GIRLS ... 191 8/20 96 EMIL NOLDE AUTUMN SEA XII ... 191 0106 MAX PECHSTEIN GREAT MILL DITCH BRIDGE 1922 11 6 OSKAR SCHLEMMER TWO HEADS AND TWO NUDES, SILVER FRIEZE IV 1931 126 5 UNTITLED 1966 ALEXANDER CALDER sheet metal and wire, painted Provenance 1966 Galerie Maeght, Paris 38 .1 x 111 .7 x 111 .7 cm Galerie Marconi, Milan ( 1979) 15 x 44 x 44 in. Private Collection (acquired from the above in 1979) signed with monogram Private collection, USA (since 2 01 3) and dated on the largest red element The work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York under application number A25784. 8 UNTITLED 1966 ALEXANDER CALDER ”To most people who look at a mobile, it’s no more time, not yet become an exponent of kinetic art than a series of flat objects that move. To a few, in the original sense of the word, but an exponent though, it may be poetry.” of a type of performance art that more or less Alexander Calder invited the participation of the audience. He was thus moving between the worlds of theatre and of In the middle of the 1960s, the decade in which the mechanical toys, which he both designed and pro - untitled mobile being discussed here was created, duced himself in large numbers. Both elements are Alexander Calder was concentrating on commis - foundational for understanding his genuine invention sions for outdoor spaces or indoor public spaces, of the mobile. that is, on monumental sculptures, mostly stabiles, but also on large-format mobiles, which he had in - At that time, Calder was already moving in the circles vented as an artistic form in the 1930s. In addition, of the Parisian Avant-garde and presenting his circus there were works for the theatre, bringing him back of wire sculptures to an illustrious audience of artistic full circle to the origins of his kinetic art. and literary figures. In 1930, these included artists such as Joan Miró and Fernand Léger – who were With the Cirque Calder , which he had begun to to remain Calder’s lifelong friends – or Piet Mondrian develop in 1926, Calder not only explored the pos - and Theo van Doesburg. In that year, Calder post - sibilities of wire sculpture, but also devoted himself poned his invitation to Theo van Doesburg to a to his favourite motif, the circus. Through the perfor - performance of the Cirque by one day in order to mances of the Cirque , Calder had, at the same avoid him having to meet Piet Mondrian – the two 10 main representatives of ‘De Stijl’ were in the mean - now, at thirty-two, I wanted to paint and work in the Alexander Calder Calder’s Circus time at loggerheads with each other about their abstract. And for two weeks or so, I painted very 192 6-1931 understanding of abstract art. modest abstractions. At the end of this, I reverted to Whitney Museum of plastic work which was still abstract.” 1 American Art For Calder and the development of his future mobile sculptures, the encounters with both of the latter were But Calder and van Doesburg are certain to have extremely productive. Calder’s visit to Mondrian’s had a deeper consensus than this on their concept studio in the same year has become part of the of art. Even in 1966 – the year in which the mobile literature. This is how he tells the story: which is in our focus here was created – Calder’s ”It was a very exciting room. Light came in from description of his memory of van Doesburg’s visit after the left and from the right, and on the solid wall the two performances of the circus is very revealing: between the windows there were experimental ”I got more of a reaction from Doesburg than I had stunts with coloured rectangles of cardboard tacked from the whole gang the night before.” 2 on. ... I suggested to Mondrian that perhaps it would be fun to make these rectangles oscillate. Thus, the theoretical understanding of Theo van 1 Calder 1966, quoted from And he, with a very serious countenance, said: ‘No Doesburg’s Elementarism seems to have had a Achim Borchardt-Hume (Ed.). Alexander Calder – Performing it is not necessary, my painting is already very fast.’ greater impact than the frequently evoked influence Sculpture. (New Haven: 2 01 5) p. 21 8. This one visit gave me a shock that started things. of Mondrian’s Neo-plasticism and Calder’s ex - 2 Calder 1966, quoted from Achim Borchardt-Hume (Ed.). Though I had heard the word ‘modern’ before, I did perience of awakening to abstraction in Mondrian’s Alexander Calder – Performing not consciously know or feel the term ‘abstract’. So studio. Van Doesburg’s dynamic contra-compositions Sculpture. (New Haven: 2 01 5) p. 21 8. 11 reflect quite precisely what Calder tried to achieve that kind. The fact is often overlooked that mobiles a little later with his mobiles. Although van are altogether complex, mathematically calculated Doesburg’s reflections on pure concrete art beyond and totally abstract objects. This does not prevent the abstraction of nature seem too strict at first their poetry from being developed through such glance to be able to describe Calder’s sculptures, lyrical analogies, as Calder himself says, but it does the latter are ultimately just that: concrete objects. not capture the core of their artistic significance. Van Doesburg describes this progress from ab - straction to concretion in exactly the same year, The actual relation to nature does not lie in these 1930, in which Calder had his revelation with earthly analogies, but in the incomprehensible abstraction: ”In their search for purity, artists were physics of the cosmos. Calder undoubtedly came forced to abstract the natural forms which concealed into contact with the theories set up by van the plastic elements, to destroy the natural forms Doesburg and others in the wake of the reflections and, in their place, to substitute artistic forms. Today by Malevich on time and space and the fourth the idea of an art form is just as obsolete as that of dimension – fully in keeping with the enthusiasm of a natural form. With our construct of the spiritual the 1920s for modern physics and the theory of form, the era of pure painting is advancing. It is the relativity. Of Calder’s close associates not only concretisation of the creative spirit.” 3. had Theo van Doesburg delved deeply into this topic, Edgar Varese, of Calder’s closer circle in This summarizes all the theoretical and artistic Paris, was also supportive of this concept. 4 Calder ambitions of the Avant-garde of the 1920s, in which expressed this comparison to his mobiles in 1932 as Calder’s creative development took place: his follows: forerunners and contemporaries, who paved the “Out of volumes, motion, spaces bounded by the way for kinetic art, that is, the Constructivists, great space, the universe. Duchamp, Moholy-Nagy, and Mondrian, as well as Out of different masses, light, heavy, middling – the already earlier virulent reflections in painting and indicated by variations of size or colour – directional sculpture on a non-mimetic, simultaneous art – that is, line – vectors which represent speeds, velocities, art that incorporates the passage of time and emu - accelerations, forces, etc ... – these directions making lates the fourth dimension – as well as synesthetic between them meaningful angles, and senses, and abstract, non-representational art. together defining one big conclusion or many. Spaces, volumes, suggested by the smallest means The fact that the artists with whom Calder was in contrast to their mass, or even including them, acquainted recognized his importance for the juxtaposed, pierced by vectors, crossed by speeds. development of sculpture, which made him the Nothing at all of this is fixed. founder of all kinetic art in post-war art, is indicated Each element able to move, to stir, to oscillate, by the distinctive aristocracy of the sponsors for the to come and go in its relationships with the other names of his works. After Marcel Duchamp had elements in its universe.“ 5 spontaneously called Calder’s first movable sculp - 3 Theo van Doesburg, Commentaires tures ‘mobiles’, Jean Arp invented the term ‘stabiles’ Almost twenty years later he formulated this analogy sur la base de la peinture concrete. In: Art Concret 1 (Paris : 1930) pp. 1-4; for the American’s immovable sculptures a year even more specifically: quoted from Charles Harrison, later, albeit more as a sarcastic commentary on ”I think that at that time and practically ever since, Paul Wood (Eds.). Kunsttheorie im 20. Jahrhundert. Vol. 1 Duchamp’s word coinage. the underlying sense of form in my work has been (Ostfildern-Ruit: 1998) P. 442. the system of the Universe, or part thereof. For that 4 For details on this point, The mobile became the unmistakable hallmark of is a rather large model to work from. What I mean see Linda Dalrymple Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidian Calder’s art, and in the following thirty years he is that the idea of detached bodies floating in Geometry in Modern Art advanced this invention to ever new variations and space, of different sizes and densities, perhaps of (Princeton: 1983).