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

Christian Zervos met Alexander Calder during a stay in Paris in the early 1930s, and he became a friend and supporter of the artist, featuring his work in numerous articles in Cahiers d’Art. The first was Anatole Jakovski’s insightful text on Calder’s mobiles, published in Cahiers d’Art 1933, nos. 5–6. This volume also included some of the earliest photographic depictions of Calder’s objects in motion 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, he recognized the enduring impact of the artist. In 1939, he published an eloquent article about Calder’s mobiles, “Mobiles en mouvement” (Cahiers d’Art 1939, nos. 1–4), followed by Gabrielle Buffet’s richly illustrated “Sandy Calder, forgeron lunaire” and Georges Mounin’s “L’objet de Calder” (Cahiers d’Art 1945–1946). A later issue also featured André Masson’s 1942 poem, “L’Atelier d’Alexander Calder” (Cahiers d’Art 1949, no. 2). 

An exhibition at Cahiers d’Art gallery was devoted to Calder in 1954, in which a mobile was suspended from the ceiling. This mobile would hang there until Christian Zervos’s death, becoming part of the gallery’s identity. The artist and the publisher maintained a friendly correspondence throughout their lives, with Calder addressing Zervos as “Taki.”

To follow the spirit of Cahiers d’Art and the friendship of Zervos with Calder, Staffan Ahrenberg organized a show dedicated to the sculptor in 2013 and published Calder by Matter, in direct collaboration with the Calder Foundation. Edited by Alexander S. C. Rower, grandson of the artist and president of the Calder Foundation, the monograph presents a new perspective on Calder’s oeuvre, life, and creative process through the lens of acclaimed graphic designer and photographer Herbert Matter. The impressive volume includes hundreds of photographs, many of which are published for the first time, as well as essays by Rower, Jed Perl, and John Hill.

In 2015, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Atelier Calder in France, the residency at Calder’s former studio in Saché, Cahiers d’Art published a special issue on Calder in France, also edited by Rower. It includes facsimile reproductions of Cahiers d’Art articles from the 1930s to 1940s, an essay by Robert Melvin Rubin on the design and construction of Calder’s Saché studio, an essay by Alfred Pacquement on Atelier Calder artists-in-residence over the past 25 years, a text by Susan Braeuer Dam on the Calder–Zervos relationship, and suites of photographs by Ugo Mulas and Agnès Varda, among other highlights. An original copper plate was etched by Calder in 1942, but no edition was printed during his lifetime. A collotype print from the copper plate etching is presented for the first time in this issue of Cahiers d’Art.