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Lot Essay
“Calder’s accomplishment is the invention of a new microcosm of art.” -Clement Greenberg, The Nation, 1943
(C. Greenberg, quoted by M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C., 1988, p. 144)
One of the largest and most sophisticated of Alexander Calder’s famed Constellation sculptures to remain in private hands, Painted Wood is the embodiment of the artist’s revolutionary sculptural form. Executed in 1943, it epitomizes Calder’s holistic approach to art, resulting in an object in which color, form, and—uniquely—movement combine to produce works of both compositional complexity and captivating beauty. Comprised of eleven painted wooden elements, suspended by lengths of string from a delicate wooden armature, Calder’s configuration remains in a constant state of flux, Graceful, dynamic and continually adapting to its changing environment, Painted Wood belongs to what the artist claimed was a completely new form of artistic expression. As the noted critic Clement Greenberg enthused when the work was first exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943, “Calder’s accomplishment is the invention of a new microcosm of art” (C. Greenberg, quoted by M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C., 1988, p. 144).
Perfectly balanced not only in terms of weight, but also in terms of color and form, each of the individual elements in Painted Wood, stand on their own merit. Some evoke natural forms, such as the piscine-like shapes that coalesce into an animated shoal, while others—such as the large element that anchors the lower part of the composition—are non-specific forms that investigate the nature of internal and external space, In addition to the physical form, Calder’s use of color is also vital as he strives to achieve a formal balance. Warm organic hues combine with more vivid yellows and blues in an early demonstration of his belief that color carried equal weight in his compositions.
Painted Wood was acquired by the celebrated collector Patricia Phelps de Cisneros over three decades ago. One of the most respected collectors of her generation, she established her eponymous foundation to acquire works of art with a deep focus on five areas: modern art, contemporary art, the colonial period of artworks from Venezuela’s Hispanic and Republican periods, art from the ethnic communities of the Orinoco River basin, and works by artists who traveled to Latin America during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. A generous benefactor to institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Patricia Phelps de Cisnero has been a steadfast champion in celebrating the arts of Latin America and ensuring their rightful place in the global artistic canon.
Calder began constructing his Constellations in 1942. Consisting of hand-carved, individually painted and unpainted wooden elements fixed to the ends of rigid steel wires, these new forms were declared by Calder to be a “new form of art” (A. Calder, ibid, p. 142). The term “Constellation” was arrived at after long discussions with his friend and Museum of Modern Art curator John James Sweeny and fellow artist Marcel Duchamp. In the present work, he expands on the formal qualities of these early static compositions, adding the dynamic essence of movement. “At first (my) objects were static,” Calder said, “seeking to give a sense of cosmic relationship. Then… I introduced flexibility, so that the relationship would be more general. From that I went on to the use of motion for its contrapuntal value, as in good choreography” (A. Calder, quoted by M. Prather, Alexander Calder: 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998, p. 149).
These works contain more visible traces of the artist’s hand than can be seen in Calder’s earlier work. He used multiple types of wood, celebrating their unique natural qualities in addition to embracing the marks left by his tools. The process is similar to the way in which he realized his later mobiles: “About my method of work,” the artist remarked, “first it’s the state of mind. Elation. I only feel elation if I’ve got ahold of something good…. I start by cutting out a lot of shapes. Next, I file them and smooth them off. Some I keep because they’re pleasing or dynamic. Some are bits I just happen to find. Then I arrange them, like papier collé, on a table, and ‘paint’ them—that is, arrange them, with wires between the pieces….” (A. Calder, quoted by A.S.C. Rower, “Deployed Nuclei,” in Calder/Miró: Constellations, exh. cat. New York, 2017, online [accessed: 10/14/2025]).
Much has been written about Calder’s visit to Piet Mondrian’s studio in Paris in 1930, and how that experience influenced the development of his mobile form. The Dutch artist’s paintings “would be fine,” Calder mused, “if they could be made to oscillate in different directions and different amplitudes” (M. Prather, ibid., p. 57). However, a visit to another artist’s studio proved even more prescient in the case of Painted Wood. Calder only made one or two visits to the atelier of Constantin Brâncuşi in Paris, but the effect was nonetheless profound and long lasting. In a letter to his friend, the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, Calder described his visit as “wonderful” and full of “great simple forms” and leaving a great impression on him (A. Calder, quoted by J. Perl, Calder: The Conquest of Space. The Later Years: 1940-1976, New York, 2020, p. 93). Admiring Brâncuşi’s deep engagement with wood in sculptures such as Torso of a Young Man (1923, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris) and Adam and Eve (1921, Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York) provided the impetus for Calder himself to begin working with wood in his Constellations.
Calder’s mobiles would become some of the most celebrated forms in postwar art. Although Mondrian disagreed with Calder’s assessment that his work could be improved by adding movement, the American artist forged ahead, invigorating the medium of sculpture in the process. Of these early mobiles, Calder said “I really don’t think that the thing can be reproduced to a formula. Each thing I make has, according to its degree of success, a plastic quality which includes many things—the mass, or masses; the sinuosity; the contrast of lightness to mass; the contrast of black to white; the contrast of somberness to color; whatever element of movement there is in the object, even its manner of suspension (i.e., support). These things may be related, and they doubtless are, but I have formed no theories about the relation. An idea which will lead me to make a new ‘object’ may come from almost anywhere, from anything” (A. Calder, quoted by M. Prather, op. cit., p. 138).
Writing in the catalogue for an exhibition of these new forms at the Galerie Louis Carré in Paris, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre stated: “These mobiles, which are neither entirely alive nor wholly mechanical, constantly disconcerting but always returning to their original position, are like aquatic plants swaying in a stream; they are like the petals of the Mimosa pudica, the legs of a decerebrate frog or gossamer threads caught in an updraft. In short, although Calder has not sought to initiate anything—there is no will here, except the will to create scale and harmonies of unknown movements—his mobiles are at once lyrical inventions, technical, almost mathematical combinations and the tangible symbol of Nature, of that great, vague Nature that squanders pollen and suddenly causes a thousand butterflies to take wing, that Nature of which we shall never know whether it is the blind sequence of causes and effects or the timid, endlessly deferred, rumpled and ruffled unfolding of idea” (J. Sartre, trans. C. Turner, “The Mobiles of Calder,” in Alexander Calder: Mobiles, Stabiles, Constellations, exh. cat., Galerie Louis Carré, 1946, online [accessed: 9/27/2024]).
Painted Wood was included in one of the most important exhibitions of Calder’s career, his 1943 retrospective at the Museum of Modern of Art, curated by John James Sweeny assisted by Marcel Duchamp. This was Calder's first ever retrospective, and the first dedicated exhibition of abstract art that the museum had organized. The show featured dozens of works and was the first in the history of the museum to, as Perl notes, “unabashedly and unashamedly” embrace abstract art. He continues that it is impossible to overestimate the significance for Calder of this particular exhibition; Calder himself admitted as much when he wrote to the museum’s founding director Alfred H. Barr acknowledging “I have long felt that whatever my success has been has been greatly as a result of the show I had at MoMA in 1943” (A. Calder, quoted by J. Perl, Calder: The Conquest of Space. The Later Years: 1940-1976, New York, 2020, p. 93). Edwin Panofsky, one of the greatest art historians of the twentieth century declared the show “splendid,” and even Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds of the time, visited the show and stated himself impressed: “I wish I’d thought of that” he marveled (A. Calder, quoted by J. Perl, Calder: The Conquest of Space. The Later Years: 1940-1976, New York, 2020, p. 97).
Calder gifted Painted Wood to the Brazilian architect Henrique E. Mindlin. Mindlin was a prominent Latin American architect and the man credited with the flowering of modern Brazilian architecture after the World War II. He also played an important in promoting the artist’s work in Latin America and introduced Calder to many of the most significant Brazilian architects of the day, many of whom would acquire the American’s work either for their own homes or to install in buildings they were designing. In 1948, at the request of Mindlin, Calder was invited to Brazil to hold an exhibition in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, a show which would include Painted Wood. It was both a critical and commercial success, as Jed Perl writes “The fact that nearly everything in the São Paulo show actually sold made Brazil something of a miracle for Calder, who never before encountered such an enthusiastic market for his work. It was an augury of even more extraordinary things to come” (J. Perl, ibid., p. 226).
Since their inception, Alexander Calder’s mobiles have become some of the most celebrated of twentieth-century art forms. He has been called the only artist in the history to have invented and then practiced an art form of his own. Calder’s beautifully constructed mobiles, stabiles and examples of monumental sculpture resonate in many dimensions as their form, color and movement provides a unique dialogue on the nature of abstraction. Painted Wood dates from the very zenith of this revolutionary period, and with its exceptional provenance and stellar exhibition history, is an outstanding early example of this form.
(C. Greenberg, quoted by M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C., 1988, p. 144)
One of the largest and most sophisticated of Alexander Calder’s famed Constellation sculptures to remain in private hands, Painted Wood is the embodiment of the artist’s revolutionary sculptural form. Executed in 1943, it epitomizes Calder’s holistic approach to art, resulting in an object in which color, form, and—uniquely—movement combine to produce works of both compositional complexity and captivating beauty. Comprised of eleven painted wooden elements, suspended by lengths of string from a delicate wooden armature, Calder’s configuration remains in a constant state of flux, Graceful, dynamic and continually adapting to its changing environment, Painted Wood belongs to what the artist claimed was a completely new form of artistic expression. As the noted critic Clement Greenberg enthused when the work was first exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1943, “Calder’s accomplishment is the invention of a new microcosm of art” (C. Greenberg, quoted by M. Prather, Alexander Calder 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C., 1988, p. 144).
Perfectly balanced not only in terms of weight, but also in terms of color and form, each of the individual elements in Painted Wood, stand on their own merit. Some evoke natural forms, such as the piscine-like shapes that coalesce into an animated shoal, while others—such as the large element that anchors the lower part of the composition—are non-specific forms that investigate the nature of internal and external space, In addition to the physical form, Calder’s use of color is also vital as he strives to achieve a formal balance. Warm organic hues combine with more vivid yellows and blues in an early demonstration of his belief that color carried equal weight in his compositions.
Painted Wood was acquired by the celebrated collector Patricia Phelps de Cisneros over three decades ago. One of the most respected collectors of her generation, she established her eponymous foundation to acquire works of art with a deep focus on five areas: modern art, contemporary art, the colonial period of artworks from Venezuela’s Hispanic and Republican periods, art from the ethnic communities of the Orinoco River basin, and works by artists who traveled to Latin America during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. A generous benefactor to institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Patricia Phelps de Cisnero has been a steadfast champion in celebrating the arts of Latin America and ensuring their rightful place in the global artistic canon.
Calder began constructing his Constellations in 1942. Consisting of hand-carved, individually painted and unpainted wooden elements fixed to the ends of rigid steel wires, these new forms were declared by Calder to be a “new form of art” (A. Calder, ibid, p. 142). The term “Constellation” was arrived at after long discussions with his friend and Museum of Modern Art curator John James Sweeny and fellow artist Marcel Duchamp. In the present work, he expands on the formal qualities of these early static compositions, adding the dynamic essence of movement. “At first (my) objects were static,” Calder said, “seeking to give a sense of cosmic relationship. Then… I introduced flexibility, so that the relationship would be more general. From that I went on to the use of motion for its contrapuntal value, as in good choreography” (A. Calder, quoted by M. Prather, Alexander Calder: 1898-1976, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1998, p. 149).
These works contain more visible traces of the artist’s hand than can be seen in Calder’s earlier work. He used multiple types of wood, celebrating their unique natural qualities in addition to embracing the marks left by his tools. The process is similar to the way in which he realized his later mobiles: “About my method of work,” the artist remarked, “first it’s the state of mind. Elation. I only feel elation if I’ve got ahold of something good…. I start by cutting out a lot of shapes. Next, I file them and smooth them off. Some I keep because they’re pleasing or dynamic. Some are bits I just happen to find. Then I arrange them, like papier collé, on a table, and ‘paint’ them—that is, arrange them, with wires between the pieces….” (A. Calder, quoted by A.S.C. Rower, “Deployed Nuclei,” in Calder/Miró: Constellations, exh. cat. New York, 2017, online [accessed: 10/14/2025]).
Much has been written about Calder’s visit to Piet Mondrian’s studio in Paris in 1930, and how that experience influenced the development of his mobile form. The Dutch artist’s paintings “would be fine,” Calder mused, “if they could be made to oscillate in different directions and different amplitudes” (M. Prather, ibid., p. 57). However, a visit to another artist’s studio proved even more prescient in the case of Painted Wood. Calder only made one or two visits to the atelier of Constantin Brâncuşi in Paris, but the effect was nonetheless profound and long lasting. In a letter to his friend, the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, Calder described his visit as “wonderful” and full of “great simple forms” and leaving a great impression on him (A. Calder, quoted by J. Perl, Calder: The Conquest of Space. The Later Years: 1940-1976, New York, 2020, p. 93). Admiring Brâncuşi’s deep engagement with wood in sculptures such as Torso of a Young Man (1923, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris) and Adam and Eve (1921, Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York) provided the impetus for Calder himself to begin working with wood in his Constellations.
Calder’s mobiles would become some of the most celebrated forms in postwar art. Although Mondrian disagreed with Calder’s assessment that his work could be improved by adding movement, the American artist forged ahead, invigorating the medium of sculpture in the process. Of these early mobiles, Calder said “I really don’t think that the thing can be reproduced to a formula. Each thing I make has, according to its degree of success, a plastic quality which includes many things—the mass, or masses; the sinuosity; the contrast of lightness to mass; the contrast of black to white; the contrast of somberness to color; whatever element of movement there is in the object, even its manner of suspension (i.e., support). These things may be related, and they doubtless are, but I have formed no theories about the relation. An idea which will lead me to make a new ‘object’ may come from almost anywhere, from anything” (A. Calder, quoted by M. Prather, op. cit., p. 138).
Writing in the catalogue for an exhibition of these new forms at the Galerie Louis Carré in Paris, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre stated: “These mobiles, which are neither entirely alive nor wholly mechanical, constantly disconcerting but always returning to their original position, are like aquatic plants swaying in a stream; they are like the petals of the Mimosa pudica, the legs of a decerebrate frog or gossamer threads caught in an updraft. In short, although Calder has not sought to initiate anything—there is no will here, except the will to create scale and harmonies of unknown movements—his mobiles are at once lyrical inventions, technical, almost mathematical combinations and the tangible symbol of Nature, of that great, vague Nature that squanders pollen and suddenly causes a thousand butterflies to take wing, that Nature of which we shall never know whether it is the blind sequence of causes and effects or the timid, endlessly deferred, rumpled and ruffled unfolding of idea” (J. Sartre, trans. C. Turner, “The Mobiles of Calder,” in Alexander Calder: Mobiles, Stabiles, Constellations, exh. cat., Galerie Louis Carré, 1946, online [accessed: 9/27/2024]).
Painted Wood was included in one of the most important exhibitions of Calder’s career, his 1943 retrospective at the Museum of Modern of Art, curated by John James Sweeny assisted by Marcel Duchamp. This was Calder's first ever retrospective, and the first dedicated exhibition of abstract art that the museum had organized. The show featured dozens of works and was the first in the history of the museum to, as Perl notes, “unabashedly and unashamedly” embrace abstract art. He continues that it is impossible to overestimate the significance for Calder of this particular exhibition; Calder himself admitted as much when he wrote to the museum’s founding director Alfred H. Barr acknowledging “I have long felt that whatever my success has been has been greatly as a result of the show I had at MoMA in 1943” (A. Calder, quoted by J. Perl, Calder: The Conquest of Space. The Later Years: 1940-1976, New York, 2020, p. 93). Edwin Panofsky, one of the greatest art historians of the twentieth century declared the show “splendid,” and even Albert Einstein, one of the greatest minds of the time, visited the show and stated himself impressed: “I wish I’d thought of that” he marveled (A. Calder, quoted by J. Perl, Calder: The Conquest of Space. The Later Years: 1940-1976, New York, 2020, p. 97).
Calder gifted Painted Wood to the Brazilian architect Henrique E. Mindlin. Mindlin was a prominent Latin American architect and the man credited with the flowering of modern Brazilian architecture after the World War II. He also played an important in promoting the artist’s work in Latin America and introduced Calder to many of the most significant Brazilian architects of the day, many of whom would acquire the American’s work either for their own homes or to install in buildings they were designing. In 1948, at the request of Mindlin, Calder was invited to Brazil to hold an exhibition in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, a show which would include Painted Wood. It was both a critical and commercial success, as Jed Perl writes “The fact that nearly everything in the São Paulo show actually sold made Brazil something of a miracle for Calder, who never before encountered such an enthusiastic market for his work. It was an augury of even more extraordinary things to come” (J. Perl, ibid., p. 226).
Since their inception, Alexander Calder’s mobiles have become some of the most celebrated of twentieth-century art forms. He has been called the only artist in the history to have invented and then practiced an art form of his own. Calder’s beautifully constructed mobiles, stabiles and examples of monumental sculpture resonate in many dimensions as their form, color and movement provides a unique dialogue on the nature of abstraction. Painted Wood dates from the very zenith of this revolutionary period, and with its exceptional provenance and stellar exhibition history, is an outstanding early example of this form.