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Lot Essay
This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A09568.
Distinguished by its elegant unification of color and shape, Four Above Ten Blacks embodies the visual poetry of Alexander Calder’s oeuvre. With a distinguished provenance originating from the esteemed collection of the Italian painter Alberto Burri, Four Above Ten Blacks exemplifies the exploration of movement that Calder’s mobiles are renowned for.
Suspended in mid-air from a network of thin black wires, tiny multi-colored discs dance through the space in a manner that evokes the wonders of the natural world. A central spine zigzags through the axis of the piece, balancing the various branches that shoot off of the main line. At the top of the mobile, the wires curve skyward before bending back down, concluding with a disc that the artist painted an assortment of primary colors.
The lower portion of the mobile differs in both form and hue from the upper section. The color pattern is now strictly monochromatic, and the discs are triangular while others have four points. Calder incised small cutouts into two of these quadrilateral shapes, offering another perspective through which to approach the piece. He painted them all black, a striking juxtaposition to upper portion, creating an effect that there are two parts of this mobile coexisting simultaneously.
This dynamic between the two differing tones of the mobile encapsulates the lively nature that Calder evoked in so many of his works. His medium of choice, the mobile, engages with the senses on multiple fronts and celebrates the complex nature of the mobile. “When everything goes right a mobile is a piece of poetry that dances with the joy of life and surprises” (A. Calder, quoted in J. Lipman, Calder’s Universe, London, 1977, p. 261).
Once activated, the mobile cascades through the air with a unique sense of motion that captivates the senses. The multiple layers of the mobile dance through the air, inviting the viewer to consider its movement from a multitude of perspectives, as the constant movement alters their perception of the mobile in the space in which it is displayed. Calder’s perpetual interest in the sculptural representation of the relationship between form and color is inherent throughout his mobiles that seek to create multiple forms of motion within one plastic form. As he summarized in an interview from 1933: “Therefore, why not plastic forms in motion? Not a simple translatory or rotary motion but several motions of different types, speeds and amplitudes composing to make a resultant whole. Just as one can compose colors, or forms, so one can compose motions” (A. Calder, Modern Painting and Sculpture, exh. cat., Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, 1933).
Calder’s language was entirely idiosyncratic, as exemplified by the synthesis of form, color, and motion present within this work. It was a visit to Mondrian’s studio in 1930 that prompted his shift to abstraction, where Calder was impressed not by the paintings but by the space itself - including the brightly colored cardboard rectangles that were tacked on the wall. The implementation of black, coupled with the blending of curvilinear forms is reminiscent of the style of Calder’s close friend and fellow artist Joan Miro.
Though he revisited the form throughout his life, each one of Calder’s mobiles is unique in the manipulations of color and form that he implemented. Four Above Ten Blacks is a testament to the artist’s sculptural finesse, an example of a form he tirelessly revisited and innovated just the same. “The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle, I represent them by discs and then I vary them. My whole theory about art is the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement” (A. Calder quoted in K. Kuh, The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists, New York, 1962, retrieved from www.calder.org).
Executed in 1956 during the period of time in which the artist almost exclusively created mobiles for friends and family, this mobile was a gift from the artist to Alberto and Minsa Burri, bearing a personal touch and signifying the relationship between the artists. Four Above Ten Blacks is a balanced synthesis between the artist’s predilections for both black and primary colors. Both a technical and visual feat, this mobile encapsulates the legacy of the artist that unifies the rigid and gentle within his hanging sculptures.
As the New York art critic Henry McBride commented in the 1940s: “Calder [has the] ability to salvage from our unlikely modern materials an art form that sways in the breeze like a bamboo reed on a river bank” (H. McBride, 1943, quoted in J. Marter, Alexander Calder, Cambridge, 1991, p. 203). With Four Above Ten Blacks Calder transforms industrial sheet metal into a delicate mobile, orchestrating its movement through the air like leaves fluttering through the wind.
Distinguished by its elegant unification of color and shape, Four Above Ten Blacks embodies the visual poetry of Alexander Calder’s oeuvre. With a distinguished provenance originating from the esteemed collection of the Italian painter Alberto Burri, Four Above Ten Blacks exemplifies the exploration of movement that Calder’s mobiles are renowned for.
Suspended in mid-air from a network of thin black wires, tiny multi-colored discs dance through the space in a manner that evokes the wonders of the natural world. A central spine zigzags through the axis of the piece, balancing the various branches that shoot off of the main line. At the top of the mobile, the wires curve skyward before bending back down, concluding with a disc that the artist painted an assortment of primary colors.
The lower portion of the mobile differs in both form and hue from the upper section. The color pattern is now strictly monochromatic, and the discs are triangular while others have four points. Calder incised small cutouts into two of these quadrilateral shapes, offering another perspective through which to approach the piece. He painted them all black, a striking juxtaposition to upper portion, creating an effect that there are two parts of this mobile coexisting simultaneously.
This dynamic between the two differing tones of the mobile encapsulates the lively nature that Calder evoked in so many of his works. His medium of choice, the mobile, engages with the senses on multiple fronts and celebrates the complex nature of the mobile. “When everything goes right a mobile is a piece of poetry that dances with the joy of life and surprises” (A. Calder, quoted in J. Lipman, Calder’s Universe, London, 1977, p. 261).
Once activated, the mobile cascades through the air with a unique sense of motion that captivates the senses. The multiple layers of the mobile dance through the air, inviting the viewer to consider its movement from a multitude of perspectives, as the constant movement alters their perception of the mobile in the space in which it is displayed. Calder’s perpetual interest in the sculptural representation of the relationship between form and color is inherent throughout his mobiles that seek to create multiple forms of motion within one plastic form. As he summarized in an interview from 1933: “Therefore, why not plastic forms in motion? Not a simple translatory or rotary motion but several motions of different types, speeds and amplitudes composing to make a resultant whole. Just as one can compose colors, or forms, so one can compose motions” (A. Calder, Modern Painting and Sculpture, exh. cat., Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, 1933).
Calder’s language was entirely idiosyncratic, as exemplified by the synthesis of form, color, and motion present within this work. It was a visit to Mondrian’s studio in 1930 that prompted his shift to abstraction, where Calder was impressed not by the paintings but by the space itself - including the brightly colored cardboard rectangles that were tacked on the wall. The implementation of black, coupled with the blending of curvilinear forms is reminiscent of the style of Calder’s close friend and fellow artist Joan Miro.
Though he revisited the form throughout his life, each one of Calder’s mobiles is unique in the manipulations of color and form that he implemented. Four Above Ten Blacks is a testament to the artist’s sculptural finesse, an example of a form he tirelessly revisited and innovated just the same. “The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle, I represent them by discs and then I vary them. My whole theory about art is the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement” (A. Calder quoted in K. Kuh, The Artist’s Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists, New York, 1962, retrieved from www.calder.org).
Executed in 1956 during the period of time in which the artist almost exclusively created mobiles for friends and family, this mobile was a gift from the artist to Alberto and Minsa Burri, bearing a personal touch and signifying the relationship between the artists. Four Above Ten Blacks is a balanced synthesis between the artist’s predilections for both black and primary colors. Both a technical and visual feat, this mobile encapsulates the legacy of the artist that unifies the rigid and gentle within his hanging sculptures.
As the New York art critic Henry McBride commented in the 1940s: “Calder [has the] ability to salvage from our unlikely modern materials an art form that sways in the breeze like a bamboo reed on a river bank” (H. McBride, 1943, quoted in J. Marter, Alexander Calder, Cambridge, 1991, p. 203). With Four Above Ten Blacks Calder transforms industrial sheet metal into a delicate mobile, orchestrating its movement through the air like leaves fluttering through the wind.