The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is presenting the first major Canadian retrospective of Alexander Calder (1898-1976) to highlight all the many facets of the career of the American “who made sculpture move.” Developed, organized and circulated by the MMFA, the exhibition Alexander Calder: Radical Inventor presents 150 works and archival documents to portray the full scope of this artist’s extraordinarily innovative multidisciplinary practice: from his wire drawings to his paintings, and from his invention of the mobile to his monumental sculptures.
Alexander Calder: Radical Inventor runs until February 24, 2019 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
A few years ago I caught the Alexander Calder retrospective at Tate Modern in London, UK. I went in as a fan of his mobile sculptures - did you know that Marcel Duchamp named these types of kinetic sculptures 'mobiles' when he saw them in Calder's first gallery show? - and was blown away by the scope of Calder's work, which included film featuring his works. But my favourite part of the exhibition was the mobile room, which I could have spent hours in, staring as the air currents hypnotically turned these bold, painted wire and metal sculptures.
