Alexander Calder

This book and the exhibition of the same title focuses on the noteworthy encounter between Alexander Calder and Piet Mondrian in 1930. It was less the meeting with the most prominent member of De Stijl that impressed the sculptor than the interior of the studio in Paris that Mondrian occupied at the time. He had covered one wall with coloured paper rectangles that he kept rearranging to arrive at the right composition. Wouldn't it have been better if the shapes could move, Calder asked, to which Mondrian replied that his work was all about rhythm. From that moment on the work of Calder took another direction. The meeting with Mondrian drove Calder towards abstract sculpture: the female figures, elephants, and fish were now replaced by spheres, triangles and organic forms reminiscent of the universe of Miró, but painted in the bright primary colours of Mondrian.