Mondrian and Calder

We recently received this multi-faceted question from Liz on the blog:

"I loved the piece by Andrew Calder. Can you tell me more about it? I forget the title. How did the Museum acquire it? What's the connection to Piet Mondrian? Did Calder know him? Did they build off of each other? Or was Calder simply influenced by Mondrian?"

Calder's Red G from 1963 is truly one of the highlights of HMoA's permanent collection. Purchased in 1965 with funds provided by the Annette HarveyBequest, the 1964 Huntington Galleries Ball, an anonymous donor, and Huntington Galleries Board Members, it has hung prominently in the Museum's front entry hall for many years now before its inclusion in this exhibition. The piece is a beautifully typical example of Calder's kinetic mobiles, wire and steel sculptures of organic shapes that engage the elements of time and motion. Each of the steel forms, usually modeleled after shapes such as the sphere or the traingle, which the artist felt furthered the suggestion of motion, moves independently with any air current that is created around it, usually caused by the movement of visitors as they explore and walk beneath the piece. As each element moves, the arrangement of the composition as a whole changes, and it casts ever-changing shadows around the gallery space, thus engaging and transforming the work's environment. The bright red hue of the sculpture is extremely striking to our visitors, but ironically color was a secondary concern for Calder who prefered to work primarily in black and white.

Calder did indeed know fellow artist Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872-1944). After studying at the Art Students League in New York, Calder moved to Paris for seven years where he befriended such famous artistic figures as Marchel Duchamp, Jean Arp, and Mondrian. Their relationship may have been slightly symbiotic, but it appears that Mondrian was much more of an influence on Calder than the other way around. After a visit to Mondrian's studio in 1930, Calder wrote, "This one visit gave me a shock that started things. Though I had often heard the word 'modern' before, I did not consciously know or feel the term 'abstract.' So now at thirty-two, I wanted to paint and work in the abstract." Shortly thereafter, Calder was invited to join the international Abstraction-Creation group that ibncluded Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Jean Arp, and many other artists working with geometric forms, which would become the focus of his own work.