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Art Encyclopedia:

Alexander Stirling Calder

(b Philadelphia, PA, 11 Jan 1870; d New York, 6 Jan 1945). Sculptor, son of (1) Alexander Milne Calder. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Eakins and Thomas Anshutz and later in Paris at the Acad?mie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Returning to Philadelphia in 1892, he won the gold medal of the Philadelphia Art Club and became an assistant instructor in modelling at the Pennsylvania Academy. His first commission, in 1893, was for a portrait statue in marble of the eminent surgeon Dr Samuel Gross to go in front of the Army Medical Museum, Washington, DC (now Washington, DC, Armed Forces Inst. Pathology, N. Mus. Health & Medic., on loan to Philadelphia, PA, Thomas Jefferson U., Medic. Coll.). In 1903 he began teaching at the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia. His first national recognition came after he won a silver medal for a statue of the explorer Philippe Fran?ois Renault at the World's Fair of 1904 in St Louis, MO. Moving to New York in 1910, he taught at the National Academy of Design and later the Art Students League. Calder was in charge of the sculptural decoration for the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915 in San Francisco after the death of Karl Bitter (1867-1915). Although he was largely trained in the French academic tradition, he transcended its limits in some of his better pieces, such as the marble figure of George Washington (1918) for the Washington Arch in New York and the Swann Memorial Fountain (bronze, 1924) in Logan Circle, Philadelphia. Among his other notable works are the sculptures for Viscaya in Miami, FL, and the bronze statue of the Norse explorer Leif Ericsson, presented to Iceland by the USA in 1932 and placed on Skolavoeroduholt, the highest hill above Reykjav?k.

Part of the Calder family

See the Abbreviations for further details.


 
 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Alexander Stirling Calder

Calder, photograph by Yousuf Karsh, 1966.
(click to enlarge)
Calder, photograph by Yousuf Karsh, 1966. (credit: ©Karsh/Woodfin Camp and Associates)
(born July 22, 1898, Lawnton, Pa., U.S. — died Nov. 11, 1976, New York, N.Y.) U.S. sculptor. He was the son and grandson of sculptors, and his mother was a painter. He studied mechanical engineering, and in 1923 attended the Art Students League, where he was influenced by artists of the Ash Can school. In 1924 he contributed illustrations to the National Police Gazette. In 1926 he moved to Paris and began making toylike animals and circus figures of wood and wire; from these he developed his famous miniature circus. In the 1930s he became well known in Paris and the U.S. for his wire sculptures, as well as for portraits, continuous-line drawings, and abstract, motor-driven constructions. He is best known as the inventor of the mobile, a forerunner of kinetic sculpture. He also constructed nonmovable sculptural works known as stabiles. Although Calder's early mobiles and stabiles were relatively small, he increasingly moved toward monumentality in his later works. His art was recognized with many large-scale exhibitions.

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Wikipedia: Alexander Stirling Calder
Swann Memorial Fountain, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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Swann Memorial Fountain, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania


Alexander Stirling Calder (January 11 1870 – 1945) was an American sculptor, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Calder was the son of sculptor Alexander Milne Calder and the father of sculptor Alexander Calder. Calder first worked as a sculptor assisting his father in producing the extensive sculpture program on the Philadelphia City Hall and in 1886 is reported to have modeled the arm of one of the figures. In 1885 at age 16 he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where he studied under the renowned Thomas Eakins. In 1890 Calder moved to Paris where he studied at the Academie Julian under Henri Michel Chapu and then was accepted in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he entered the atelier of Alexandre Falguière. In 1902 he returned to Philadelphia and began his career as a sculptor in earnest. Throughout his career Calder was frequently a teacher, variously teaching sculpture or anatomy at the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts, the School of Industrial Art, in Philadelphia, the National Academy of Design in NYC and the Art Students League, also in NYC.

In 1912 Calder, along with Karl Bitter was named head of the sculpture program for the Pacific-Panama International Exposition. Calder obtained a studio in NYC and there employed the services of model Audrey Munson who posed for Calder and a host of other artists.

Selected architectural sculpture

  • Assisted father on Philadelphia City Hall, John McArthur Jr., architect, completed in 1893
  • Witherspoon Building Figures, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1898 – 1899
  • 6 spandrel figures, Throop Polytechnic Institute (now the California Institute of Technology} 1906
  • Frieze, Missouri State Capitol, architects, Jefferson City, Missouri 1924
  • Four figures of famous actresses, I Miller Building, NYC 1928

Selected other works

  • Sundial, West Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1906
  • Henry Charles Lea Memorial, Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1911
  • Depew Fountain, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1916 (Calder finished this commission that was just begun by Bitter prior to his being killed)
  • George Washington, Washington Square Arc, NYC 1916
  • Swann Memorial Fountain, Philadelphia Pennsylvania 1920
  • Gateposts, Asia, Africa, Europe & America, and fountain, University Museum, Eyre, Day Cope & Stewardson architects, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1920s
  • Shakespeare Memorial, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1926
  • Leif Eriksson, Reykjavík, Iceland 1932

Images

Leif Eiriksson Memorial, Reykjavík, Iceland

Depew Memorial Fountain, Indianapolis, Indiana

Shakespeare Memorial, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The Nations of the West topped the Arch of the Setting Sun at the Panama-Pacific Exposition held at San Francisco in 1915.

Sources & resources

  • Armstrong, Craven et al, 200 Years of American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of Art, NYC, 1976
  • Bach,Penny Balkin, Public Art in Philadelphia, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1992
  • Calder, A. Sterling, Thoughts of A. Stirling Calder on Art and Life, Privately published, New York, 1947
  • Craven, Wayne, Sculpture in America, Thomas Y Crowell Co, NY, NY 1968
  • Fairmont Park Association, Sculpture of a City: Philadelphia's Treasures in Bronze and Stone, Walker Publishing Co., Inc, NY. NY 1974
  • Falk, Peter Hastings, ed., Who was Who in American Art, Sound View Press, Madison Connecticut, 1985
  • Gadzinski, Cunningham, Panhorst et al, American Sculpture in the Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1997
  • Hayes, Margaret Calder, Three Alexander Calders, Paul S Eriksson Publisher, Middlebury, Vermont, 1977
  • Kvaran, Einar Einarsson, American Architectural Sculpture unpublished manuscript,
  • Opitz, Glenn B ed., Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers, Apollo Book, Poughkeepsie NY, 1986
  • Proske, Beatrice Gilman, Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture, Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina, 1968

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Art Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.  Read more
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