Alexander Calder
Untitled (Dancing Stars), ca. 1948

Artist
Alexander Calder

Title
Untitled (Dancing Stars)

Year of creation
around 1948

Technique and dimensions
Lacquer on metal, painted, 60 x 90 x 90 cm

Year of acquisition
1978

Two moments add up to a happy synthesis for Alexander Calder: He was the son of a sculptor and a painter, and he completed an engineering degree from 1915 to 1919. He then wanted to turn to art and therefore went to Paris in 1926 to join the circle of Surrealists. His figures, portraits and animals created there from the simplest wire lines and the “circus” resulting from these experiments attracted great attention from his artist friends. This design, derived from the simple line drawing, was to become of central importance for his further work.

Since the beginning of the 1930s, he has been developing mechanically driven "mobiles" - this name comes from Marcel Duchamp - before he moved on to constructing delicate metal structures in 1933 that were movable within themselves and could therefore react to small air currents from outside. This gradually led to a change in his formal world, which was initially more dominated by a geometric design, because he was so impressed by the work and person of Piet Mondrian that he - in his own words - "Mondrians, they move", wanted to create. The Dutchman's clear, intense colors continued to influence him, but the figuration itself - also encouraged by his friends Hans Arp and Joan Miró - took on a more and more organic character. The reference to processes in nature, which received a symbolic counterpart in his works, became the real concern of his art. The balance between the extension of the forms into space and, conversely, the influence of the spherical on the fragile forms becomes a decisive challenge for him.

This is how Untitled (Dancing Stars) creates a surprising, floating play of forces that is reminiscent of leaves in the wind, the beating of birds' wings or dance rhythms. Calder juxtaposes the heavier, larger disc elements on one side with the diverse branches on the other side in such a way that the two always remain connected to each other. The oscillating shapes and the gradual oscillation of movements appear like the breaking up and ebbing of living impulses.

On the occasion of his exhibition at the Berlin Academy of Arts in 1967, Alexander Calder retrospectively stated: "I believe that from that moment on and practically always since, the system of the universe or a part of this system became the deeper meaning of all forms in my work. (. ..) What I mean to say is that the idea of ​​detached bodies sliding through space, bodies of different dimensions and densities, perhaps of different colors and heats, surrounded and permeated by gaseous substances, some motionless while others follow them move along their path according to their own rhythm - that all these bodies appear to me as the ideal origin of the forms."

Fritz Jacobi