Alexander Calder’s Painted Wood brings together movement and colour in a ‘supreme form’

In 1943 at forty-five years old, Alexander Calder became the youngest artist to get a solo retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition, curated by James Johnson Sweeney assisted by Marcel Duchamp, proved pivotal for the artist’s career. In a letter to MoMA’s founding director Alfred H. Barr Jr., Calder later wrote, ‘I have long felt that whatever my success has been has been greatly as a result of the show I had at the MoMA in 1943.’

The major retrospective established Calder as a pivotal modern artist and enthused visitors far and wide. A welcoming notice in the museum’s garden read Please Touch! Guests were invited to interact with the kinetic artworks — from blowing on hanging mobiles to activating standing sculptures. A monumental mobile from that groundbreaking exhibition, Painted Wood (1943), will make its auction debut this November as a highlight of the 20th Century Evening Sale, part of Christie’s 20th and 21st Century Art auctions in New York. The sculpture is the largest and most significant of Calder’s wooden Constellation mobiles ever to come to auction.

Painted Wood, part of Calder’s esteemed Constellation series, is a fascinating reflection of its time. Prior to the series, Calder had largely favoured sheet metal over other materials such as wood. By 1942, however, aluminium became critical to the war effort, primarily used for airplane production. Cognisant of wartime scarcities, Calder explored the formal possibilities of wood.

That year, he took an ebony sculpture he made in 1929 called The Crowd and sawed it into small pieces that he carved into suspended objects for several sculptures. He began working with a variety of woods, from common strains such as walnut, and oak, to obscure, such as purpleheart and lignum vitae. After each piece was carved and smoothed - and some painted - they were laid out on a table to assemble. The experimentation eventually paved the way to his Constellation series, which came later that year. Marcel Duchamp and James Johnson Sweeney, ideating what to name the new sculptural works, proposed 'Constellations’. Calder continued the series, encompassing static wall sculptures as well as standing and hanging clusters of wooden forms connected by thread and wire, throughout the war.

Cascading down almost seven feet, Painted Wood comprises eleven individual components: some in vibrant colours and others unpainted, displaying the natural wood; several in biomorphic shapes, others in abstract forms. The sculpture is one of the largest and most impressive examples of Calder’s rare wood mobiles remaining in private hands. ‘This sculpture is the best in its class,’ says Stephen Jones, Head of Research, Post-War and Contemporary Art, at Christie’s. ‘It’s one of his supreme forms in which movement and colour come together in a really exemplary way.’

In response to seeing a motorized standing mobile in the 1943 retrospective, Albert Einstein remarked, ‘I wish I'd thought of that.’ The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, so inspired by the way the forms were suspended in the air, wrote: ‘These mobiles, which are neither entirely alive nor wholly mechanical... are like aquatic plants swaying in a stream....his mobiles are at once lyrical inventions, technical, almost mathematical combinations.’ Renowned art critic Clement Greenberg called the hanging sculptures a 'new microcosm of art.’

Shortly after the MoMA exhibition, Calder met prominent Brazilian modernist architect Henrique Mindlin. The two developed a friendship and professional relationship over the course of several decades which was inaugurated by an important trip Calder took to Rio de Janeiro in 1948 for an exhibition of his works, organised by Mindlin. The exhibition was a critical and commercial success, and Calder later gifted Painted Wood to Mindlin. Calder had 'never before encountered such an enthusiastic market for his work,’ wrote the American art critic Jed Perl.

Today, Calder’s relevance in the public sphere is undeniable, and only continues to grow. Around the world his monumental sculptures grace such institutions as The Smithsonian, The J. Paul Getty Museum, and even John F. Kennedy Airport. His dynamic works have inspired everyone from Einstein to composer John Cage to choreographer Martha Graham. This September, Calder Gardens opened in the artist’s birthplace of Philadelphia, with a building designed by Herzog & de Meuron and an all-seasons garden conceived by Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf. In October, the Whitney Museum of American Art celebrates High Wire: Calder's Circus at 100, the centennial of Calder’s beloved Cirque Calder.

Since their inception, Calder’s mobiles have captivated audiences with their delicately balanced forms and trailblazing kinetic movements that pushed the medium of sculpture forwards. While Painted Wood has resided in the same private collection for the past thirty-two years, this November, collectors will have the chance to acquire one of the most impressive examples of Calder’s rare wood mobiles.