Alexander Calder

Calder with 21 feuilles blanches (1953), Paris, 1954
Photograph by Agnès Varda © Agnès Varda

Alexander Calder (1898–1976)

Alexander Calder is among the most inventive and influential artists of the twentieth century, and one whose relationship with Cahiers d'Art spans decades of shared history. Born in Lawnton, Pennsylvania, Calder trained as a mechanical engineer before turning to art, studying at the Art Students League of New York. He settled in Paris in 1926, quickly immersing himself in the city's avant-garde circles and forging friendships with Joan Miró, Fernand Léger, and Marcel Duchamp, among others.

Calder's singular contribution to modern art was the invention of the mobile, a form of kinetic sculpture that introduced real movement, chance, and time into three-dimensional work. Alongside his mobiles, Calder created stabiles (large-scale static sculptures), wire constructions, gouaches, jewelry, and theatrical sets, all marked by the same spirit of play, structural ingenuity, and irreverent humor. His monumental stabiles can be found in public spaces across the world, including Le Spiral (1958), permanently installed at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, one of the most iconic examples of his large-scale work in dialogue with architecture and public life.

His work fundamentally expanded what sculpture could be: not a fixed object, but a living system in perpetual transformation.

Calder and Cahiers d'Art

Christian Zervos met Alexander Calder during a stay in Paris in the early 1930s, and the two became friends, with Zervos emerging as an early and consistent supporter of the artist's work. The first publication dedicated to Calder in Cahiers d'Art was Anatole Jakovski's insightful text on his mobiles, published in Cahiers d'Art 1933, nos. 5–6 — a volume that also included some of the earliest photographic depictions of Calder's objects in motion, captured by photographer Marc Vaux.

Following Zervos's coverage of the Spanish Republican Pavilion at the 1937 Paris World's Fair, where Calder exhibited his Mercury Fountain in front of Picasso's Guernica, his recognition of the artist's enduring importance only deepened. In 1939, he published an eloquent article on Calder's mobiles, "Mobiles en mouvement" (Cahiers d'Art 1939, nos. 1–4). This was followed by Gabrielle Buffet's richly illustrated "Sandy Calder, forgeron lunaire" and Georges Mounin's "L'objet de Calder" (Cahiers d'Art 1945–1946), which together situated Calder as a wholly singular figure: one who had made instability, humor, and physical motion into the very substance of modern sculpture. A later issue featured André Masson's 1942 poem, "L'Atelier d'Alexander Calder" (Cahiers d'Art 1949, no. 2). These were not incidental notices but considered acts of critical and literary engagement, placing Calder at the heart of the evolving conversation that Cahiers d'Art sustained across the twentieth century.

This relationship extended beyond the printed page. In 1954, an exhibition at the Cahiers d'Art gallery was devoted to Calder, and a mobile was suspended from the ceiling of the space. It would remain there until Christian Zervos's death, becoming quietly woven into the gallery's own identity. Throughout their lives, the artist and the publisher maintained a warm personal correspondence, with Calder addressing Zervos by the affectionate nickname "Taki."

Letter from Alexander Calder to Christian Zervos, 1954

Recent Collaborations with the Calder Foundation

The connection between Cahiers d'Art and Calder's legacy has continued well after the artist's death in 1976, through an ongoing partnership with the Calder Foundation.

Among the fruits of this collaboration is Calder by Matter (2013), a major publication featuring over 300 photographs by Herbert Matter, many previously unpublished. Matter, a photographer and graphic designer, was a close friend of Calder's who enjoyed rare access to the artist's world: he photographed Calder's sculptures at different stages of their realization, and captured the artist at work in his studios and at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut. The result is an intimate portrait of both the sculptor's life and his creative process, accompanied by six stamped and numbered gelatin silver prints.

Also published in 2013 in collaboration with the Calder Foundation, Mobile in Motion presents six prints by Herbert Matter documenting a Calder mobile photographed in 1936, recording a single form across different states of movement and tracing the arc of its perpetual transformation.

Most recently, Cahiers d'Art published Chess Knightmares, a book which includes the long-unpublished portfolio (1944), of the same name, developed in dialogue with Marcel Duchamp, who contributed alternate titles, and Mary Reynolds, who gave the work its name. In these drawings, Calder takes the ordered world of chess and animates it from within: kings, queens, and pawns become unruly, eccentric figures, at once playful and unsettling. The chessboard ceases to be a field of pure strategy and becomes instead a stage for imagination.

In collaboration with the Calder Foundation, Cahiers d'Art has also produced a new edition of Calder's 1944 chess set, originally made for The Imagery of Chess at the Julien Levy Gallery and kept by the artist for his own use. Recreated from detailed scans of the original, the edition preserves the directness of Calder's hand: a queen taller than the king, a knight of unexpected physicality, and the traditional opposition of black and white replaced by red and blue. As with so much of Calder's work, the familiar system is reimagined from within.

Calder with 21 feuilles blanches (1953), Paris, 1954Photograph by Agnès Varda © Agnès Varda