Selected Images

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  Pablo Picasso, Acrobat, 1930
  Pablo Picasso, Acrobat, 1930

  Pablo Picasso
  Spanish, 1881–1973
  Acrobat (Acrobate), 1930
  Oil on plywood
  Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte, Madrid

  Pablo Picasso here employs a single, unbroken line to render this astonishingly flexible acrobat, creating a silhouette akin to Alexander Calder’s wire drawings in space. The acrobat’s contortions activate all four sides of the painting and challenge traditional conceptions of a vertical or horizontal orientation. As in Calder’s work, the seemingly empty surrounding space is also activated to serve as an essential component of the composition.

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  Alexander Calder, Aztec Josephine Baker, 1930
  Alexander Calder, Aztec Josephine Baker, 1930

  Alexander Calder
  American, 1898–1976
  Aztec Josephine Baker, 1930
  Wire
  Calder Foundation, New York, promised gift of Holton Rower

  The Black dancer and cabaret performer Josephine Baker took Jazz Age Paris by storm in the late 1920s with her revolutionary and risqué dancing at the Folies Bergère. This sculpture, the last of Calder’s five wire renderings of Baker, conveys the essence of her dazzling physical presence and public persona. By articulating her body so that it sways with air currents, Calder captures her dynamism, instead of merely recording a physical likeness.

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  Pablo Picasso, Figure (Project for a Monument to Guillaume Apollinaire), 1928
  Pablo Picasso, Figure (Project for a Monument to Guillaume Apollinaire), 1928

  Pablo Picasso
  Spanish, 1881–1973
  Figure (Project for a Monument to Guillaume Apollinaire) (Figure [projet pour un monument à Guillaume Apollinaire]), 1928
  Wire and sheet metal
  Musée national Picasso-Paris
  On deposit at the Centre Pompidou, Paris
  Musée national d’art moderne-Centre de création industrielle
  Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979, MP266

  This is Picasso’s study for a sculpture commissioned to honor the writer Guillaume Apollinaire. Rejecting traditional materials, Picasso devised an abstract construction of metal rods that corresponds to the simple black lines of his drawings. Drawing inspiration from Apollinaire’s text The Poet Assassinated (1916), he sought to make “a statue out of nothing, out of emptiness,” but the commissioning committee rejected his innovative concept as too radical.

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  Alexander Calder, Croisière, 1931
  Alexander Calder, Croisière, 1931

  Alexander Calder
  American, 1898–1976
  Croisière, 1931
  Wire, wood, and paint
  Calder Foundation, New York

  Croisière describes disparate, yet complementary, forces: solidity and transparency, volume and void, activity and inactivity. Reflecting later, Calder observed, “At that time and practically ever since, the underlying form in my work has been the system of the Universe, or part thereof . . . What I mean is that the idea of detached bodies floating in space, of different sizes and densities, perhaps of different colors and temperatures, and surrounded and interlarded with wisps of gaseous condition, and some at rest, while others move in peculiar manners, seems to me the ideal source of form.”

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  Pablo Picasso, Reclining Nude, Boisgeloup, April 4, 1932
  Pablo Picasso, Reclining Nude, Boisgeloup, April 4, 1932

  Pablo Picasso
  Spanish, 1881–1973
  Reclining Nude (Nu couché), Boisgeloup, April 4, 1932
  Oil on canvas
  Musée national Picasso-Paris, Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979, MP142

  The subject of this sensual nude is Marie-Thérèse Walter, the young woman who inspired an outpouring of erotic works in all media by Picasso. For the artist, Walter embodied the fertile forces of nature, represented here by earthbound fruit and leaves and by the celestial sun and moon. Her upraised left arm, which frames a half-moon profile against a black void, finds a resonant echo in the wire lines encircling the voids in Calder’s abstract sculptures.

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  Pablo Picasso, Woman in an Armchair, Paris, April 2, 1947
  Pablo Picasso, Woman in an Armchair, Paris, April 2, 1947

  Pablo Picasso
  Spanish, 1881–1973
  Woman in an Armchair (Femme dans un fauteuil), Paris, April 2, 1947
  Oil on canvas
  On deposit at Musée Picasso, Antibes
  Jacqueline Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1990, MP1990-23

  Picasso’s image of his lover Françoise Gilot seated in an armchair is one of a series of works in which he likens her to a flower, using organic forms derived from nature. He strips her figure of all that is superfluous to distill its elementary structure and essential lines. Even more remarkably, he suggests that Gilot is partially transparent and that the voids in her body are equally significant sculptural forms.

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  Alexander Calder, Seven Black, Red and Blue, 1947
  Alexander Calder, Seven Black, Red and Blue, 1947

  Alexander Calder
  American, 1898–1976
  Seven Black, Red and Blue, 1947
  Oil on canvas
  Calder Foundation, New York

  Calder first ventured into abstraction with a series of oil paintings in 1930. During the 1940s and 1950s, he made several paintings that incorporate biomorphic shapes, floating discs, and spirals to evoke motion and space on a two-dimensional surface. Paintings such as Seven Black, Red and Blue underscore the complexities of his imagination—fluid and dynamic, full of vibrancies and dissonances.

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  Alexander Calder, Vertical Foliage, 1941
  Alexander Calder, Vertical Foliage, 1941

  Alexander Calder
  American, 1898–1976
  Vertical Foliage, 1941
  Sheet metal, wire, and paint
  Calder Foundation, New York

  Vertical Foliage comprises an elegant cascade of black elements that are subtly graduated by shape and size. At this time, Calder expanded his creation of large yet delicate mobiles that achieve a dynamic expression in space. He also perfected an antigravity effect with a system of weights and balances that make heavy elements seem to float in the air.

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  Pablo Picasso, The Bathers: The Woman with Outstretched Arms, Cannes, summer 1956
  Pablo Picasso, The Bathers: The Woman with Outstretched Arms, Cannes, summer 1956

  Pablo Picasso
  Spanish, 1881–1973
  The Bathers: The Woman with Outstretched Arms (Les Baigneurs: la femme aux bras écartés), Cannes, summer 1956
  Bronze
  Musée national Picasso-Paris, Pablo Picasso Acceptance in Lieu, 1979, MP356

  Fascinated by the shadows cast by the bathers he watched on the beach at Antibes on the French Riviera, Picasso came up with six archetypal figures, three of which are shown in the exhibition, their simplified silhouettes seeming to stand out against the light. The original sculptures were assembled from wooden planks and an astonishing array of found objects—bed legs, broomsticks, picture frames—before being cast in bronze. The bathers are each engaged in a different seaside activity. The round-headed Child is swimming, the Woman Diver is about to drop in the water, and the Woman with Outstretched Arms embraces the breeze. Like shadows, the flattened forms of these sculptures are nearly two-dimensional, emphasizing their strong silhouettes.

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  Alexander Calder, My Shop, 1955
  Alexander Calder, My Shop, 1955

  Alexander Calder
  American, 1898–1976
  My Shop, 1955
  Oil on canvas
  Calder Foundation, New York

  This view of Calder’s Roxbury, Connecticut, studio includes sixteen identifiable works from every phase of his career. A coal stove looms large in the right foreground. Like some of the paintings leaning against the wall, My Shop appears to be unfinished, but it is signed and dated. The concept of the unfinished or open-ended idea runs deep in all of Calder’s work—like a temporarily motionless mobile that projects potential energy, ready for activation.

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  Pablo Picasso, Bull's Head, 1942
  Pablo Picasso, Bull's Head, 1942

  Pablo Picasso
  Spanish, 1881–1973
  Bull’s Head (Tête de Taureau), 1942
  Bronze
  Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte, Madrid

  Pablo Picasso created the original assemblage for this bronze from a discarded bicycle seat and handlebars. “In a flash, they joined together in my head. The idea of the Bull’s head came to me before I had a chance to think. All I did was weld them together,” he said. Picasso was fascinated by the process of transformation and said that, ideally, he would discard the assemblage so that someone could use the seat and handlebars to repair a bicycle.

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  Alexander Calder, Scarlet Digitals, 1945
  Alexander Calder, Scarlet Digitals, 1945

  Alexander Calder
  American, 1898–1976
  Scarlet Digitals, 1945
  Sheet metal, wire, and paint
  Calder Foundation, New York, promised gift of Alexander S. C. Rower

  Calder’s Scarlet Digitals presents three initial perspectives: looking up, eye level, and looking down. Set in motion, this sculpture expands the implied spatial volumes encompassed by its projecting and rotating elements. The unique, chance gestures of Calder’s mobiles served as a prelude to those of Abstract Expressionism, while their chance movements inspired John Cage, who composed the musical score for the film Works of Calder (1950).

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  Pablo Picasso, Woman with Outstretched Arms, 1961
  Pablo Picasso, Woman with Outstretched Arms, 1961

  Pablo Picasso
  Spanish, 1881–1973
  Woman with Outstretched Arms, 1961
  Painted iron
  Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

  Picasso’s life-size Woman with Outstretched Arms is one of his largest sheet-metal sculptures. He first conceived the work in cut and folded paper and then translated it into metal, incorporating fragments of black metal grillwork to suggest darker forms and shadows.

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  Alexander Calder, La Grande Vitesse, 1969
  Alexander Calder, La Grande Vitesse, 1969

  Alexander Calder
  American, 1898–1976
  La Grande Vitesse (1:5 intermediate maquette), 1969
  Sheet metal, bolts, and paint
  Calder Foundation, New York

  In his last decade, Calder focused on large-scale public sculpture commissions. This is a model for a vibrant red sculpture installed in the plaza of City Hall in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “It’s really just for differentiation, but I love red so much that I almost want to paint everything red,” Calder said in the 1960s. The bold, curving shapes summarize his lifelong interest in creating a dialogue between voids and volumes.