Alexander Calder

A hallmark piece executed on a grand scale, Calder’s ‘Slender Legs’ (1959) vacillates between motion and stasis and mobile and monument. The standing mobile—a marriage of the artist's two signature sculptural innovations—is composed of lithe, free-moving ‘arms’ counterbalanced by an immobile triangular base, or the work's titular ‘legs.’ Five sharply angular elements coming off the sculpture’s arms are unfixed, poised to shift and slip in a breeze.

Calder produced ‘Slender Legs’ at a major transitional moment in his oeuvre. At the time he began to turn his attention from more intimate works to sculptures executed on a grand scale—a shift that he would describe one year later in 1960 as an ‘agrandissement’ in his work. [1] Foreshadowing his total commitment to monumental sculpture in the last decade of his life, Calder would spend 1957 to 1959 working on several important large-scale commissions. These projects included ‘The Whirling Ear’ for the United States Pavilion of the Brussels Universal and International Exhibition; ‘Spirale’ for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris; and ‘.125’ for Idlewild Airport (now known as John F. Kennedy International Airport) in New York.

Calder reviewing the installation of ‘.125,’ Idlewild Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport), New York, 1957 © 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Alexander Calder was born in 1898, the second child of artist parents—his father was a sculptor and his mother a painter. In his mid-twenties, Calder moved to New York City, where he studied at the Art Students League and worked at the ‘National Police Gazette,’ illustrating sporting events and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Shortly after his move to Paris in 1926, Calder created his ‘Cirque Calder’ (1926–31), a complex and unique body of art. It wasn’t long before his performances of the ‘Cirque’ captured the attention of the Parisian avant-garde.