Calder

The presentation in Seoul features a selection of sculptures created by Calder over the course of three decades. It includes quintessential hanging mobiles such as Untitled (1969) and Untitled (1963) as well as the stabiles Les Arêtes de poisson (maquette, 1965) and Gwenfritz (1:5 intermediate maquette, 1968), one of the models for Calder’s 35-foot-tall sculpture outside the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Also included in the exhibition is the magnificent standing mobile Franji Pani (1955), made during Calder’s two-month trip to India, where he realized a series of sculptures at the behest of architect and collector Gira Sarabhai in exchange for a tour around the country.

The exhibition centers on ten vibrant works on paper, which represent a lesser known but significant aspect of the artist’s practice. The ink and gouache paintings in this presentation date to the 1960s and 1970s, ranging from works punctuated by dynamic black lines that bleed into variously colored backgrounds to those with starkly rendered spirals and geometric forms that visually echo his sculptural practice. The collector and art historian Jean Lipman wrote that this medium, which Calder focused on in his later years, suited the artist’s “high-spirited, rapid, and spontaneous expression.”

Another highlight of the exhibition is Calder’s oil painting The Black Moon (1964), which sets a crescent and a series of circles against a dreamy background of soft gray and yellow tones. The composition also features a large white spherical shape, whose blue outlines suggest a third dimension beyond the canvas. Notably, Calder’s first truly abstract works of art were part of a series of small oils made in the wake of a transformative visit to Piet Mondrian’s studio in October 1930. Calder was deeply impressed by the spatial dynamics of the studio, later writing that the visit “gave me a shock that started things.”