The first biography of America's greatest twentieth-century sculptor, Alexander Calder: an authoritative and revelatory achievement, based on a wealth of letters and papers never before available, and written by one of our most renowned art critics. Alexander Calder is one of the most beloved and widely admired artists of the twentieth century. Anybody who has ever set foot in a museum knows him as the inventor of the mobile, America's unique contribution to modern art. But only now, forty years after the artist's death, is the full story of his life being told in this biography, which is based on unprecedented access to Calder's letters and papers as well as scores of interviews. Jed Perl shows us why Calder was--and remains--a barrier breaker, an avant-garde artist with mass appeal. This beautifully written, deeply researched book opens with Calder's wonderfully peripatetic upbringing in Philadelphia, California, and New York. Born in 1898 into a family of artists--his father was a well-known sculptor, his mother a painter and a pioneering feminist--Calder went on as an adult to forge important friendships with a who's who of twentieth-century artists, including Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Georges Braque, and Piet Mondrian. We move through Calder's early years studying engineering to his first artistic triumphs in Paris in the late 1920s, and to his emergence as a leader in the international abstract avant-garde. His marriage in 1931 to the free-spirited Louisa James--she was a great-niece of Henry James--is a richly romantic story, related here with a wealth of detail and nuance. Calder's life takes on a transatlantic richness, from New York's Greenwich Village in the Roaring Twenties, to the Left Bank of Paris during the Depression, and then back to the United States, where the Calders bought a run-down old farmhouse in western Connecticut. New light is shed on Calder's lifelong interest in dance, theater, and performance, ranging from the Cirque Calder, the theatrical event that became his calling card in bohemian Paris to collaborations with the choreographer Martha Graham and the composer Virgil Thomson. More than 350 illustrations in color and black-and-white--including little-known works and many archival photographs that have never before been seen--further enrich the story.

Alexander Calder's jewellery has the same linear yet three-dimensional quality as his famous mobiles, and the parts that comprise each piece are hammered, shaped, and composed in a fashion that echoes the artist's creation of his sculpture. This work features photographs of his jewellery worn by notable patrons, art collectors, and artists.

The concluding volume to the first biography of one of the most important, influential, and beloved twentieth-century sculptors, and one of the greatest artists in the cultural history of America--is a vividly written, illuminating account of his triumphant later years. The second and final volume of this magnificent biography begins during World War II, when Calder--known to all as Sandy--and his wife, Louisa, opened their home to a stream of artists and writers in exile from Europe. In the postwar decades, they divided their time between the United States and France, as Calder made his first monumental public sculptures and received blockbuster commissions that included Expo '67 in Montreal and the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Jed Perl makes clear how Calder's radical sculptural imagination shaped the minimalist and kinetic art movements that emerged in the 1960s. And we see, as well, that through everything--their ever-expanding friendships with artists and writers of all stripes; working to end the war in Vietnam; hosting riotous dance parties at their Connecticut home; seeing the "mobile," Calder's essential artistic invention, find its way into Webster's dictionary--Calder and Louisa remained the risk-taking, singularly bohemian couple they had been since first meeting at the end of the Roaring Twenties. The biography ends with Calder's death in 1976 at the age of seventy-eight--only weeks after an encyclopedic retrospective of his work opened at the Whitney Museum in New York--but leaves us with a new, clearer understanding of his legacy, both as an artist and a man.

Alexander Calder is surely the most beloved artist of the twentieth century - as well as a major figure in the history of modern sculpture. Calder invented the mobile and the stabile; he was endlessly creative at making drawings, jewellery, toys, and household objects; he even made a miniature circus that is treasured by children of all ages. Calder has been appreciated as much for his witty and playful personality as for his artistic genius. Now aspects of both the man and the artist are captured in a beautifully produced book, created to be especially accessible for young readers. Alexander Calder and His Magical Mobiles with its delightful text tells the story of Calder's life and career, and relates - often in the artist's own words - his working methods and his own feelings about his art. The publication also presents a treasury of favourite works by Calder, as well as fascinating photographs of the artist at work. There is also a sequence of photographs that can be flipped to show a mobile in motion. AUTHOR: Jean Lipman, an authority on American art and modern sculpture is a long-time friend of Calder and his family and has collected his work for many years. Mrs Lipman is the author three Calder books and was the editor of Art in America magazine for thirty years, then following that she was editor of publications at the Whitney Museum of American Art. SELLING POINTS: *In 95 illustrations Calder's sculptures are presented as studies of motion, which also depict his playfulness and humour *Includes a guide to many of the Calder sculptures that can be seen in museums and public spaces around the world ILLUSTRATIONS: 40 colour & 55 b/w illustrations

As a boy, Alexander ?Sandy? Calder was always fiddling with odds and ends, making objects for friends. When he got older and became an artist, his fiddling led him to create wire sculptures. One day, Sandy made a lion. Next came a lion cage. Before he knew it, he had an entire circus and was traveling between Paris and New York performing a brand-new kind of art for amazed audiences. This is the story of Sandy?s Circus, as told by Tanya Lee Stone with Boris Kulikov?s spectacular and innovative illustrations. Calder?s original circus is on permanent display at the Whitney Museum in New York City.

A legendary era comes to vivid life in this saga of the beautiful, unforgiving American West, where the only thing more vital than hard work is the love of an unforgettable woman. “A sprawling, emotional love story.” —Publishers Weekly The Calder family patriarch is known throughout Montana as a force no one in his right mind would cross. But in New York Times bestselling author Janet Dailey’s latest novel, sometimes love can make even the most stubborn man do crazy things. Lost and left for dead after a violent stampede, a young cowboy battles his way to Montana and a fresh start among the cattlemen wresting vast empires from the wilderness. Joe is no saint, but he proves himself a hero many times over, giving his heart along the way to the fiercely independent midwife who saves his life, then bears his child out of wedlock. Sarah’s ambition is to train as a doctor, but harsh reality dictates a different life path. One that will test her strength and courage but end in the new life of her dreams . . . Dailey fearlessly explores the sheer grit of the women and men who settled the frontier, the characters, both strong and weak, who competed for a piece of the open range, and the fascinating, never more timely story of America's westward expansion.

This new mystery from bestselling author Blue Balliett is now available in After Words paperback!When Calder Pillay travels with his father to a remote village in England, he finds a mix of mazes and mystery . . . including an unexpected Alexander Calder sculpture in the town square. Calder is strangely drawn to the sculpture, while other people have less-than-friendly feelings towards it. Both the boy and the sculpture seem to be out of place . . . and then, on the same night, they disappear! Calder's friends Petra and Tommy must fly out to help his father find him. But this mystery has more twists and turns than a Calder mobile . . . with more at stake than first meets the eye.