Alexander Calder:
The Paris Years, 1926–1933

When Alexander "Sandy" Calder (1898–1976) arrived in Paris in 1926, he aspired to be a painter; when he left in 1933, he had evolved into the artist we know today: an international figure and defining force in twentieth-century sculpture. In these seven years Calder's fluid, animating drawn line transformed from two dimensions to three, from ink and paint to wire, and his radical innovations included open form wire caricature portraits, a bestiary of wire animals, his beloved and critically important miniature Circus(1926–31), abstract and figurative sculptures, and his paradigm-shifting "mobiles."

The Whitney has the largest body of work by Alexander Calder in any museum and is proud to be the exclusive American venue for this landmark exhibition, co-organized with the Centre Pompidou.

Sponsored by CIT.

The exhibition and catalogue are made possible through a generous grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Additional support is provided by The Brown Foundation, Inc., Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen, Faith and Philip Geier, The Florence Gould Foundation, The Jon and Mary Shirley Foundation, The Lipman Family Foundation, Julie and William Obering, Dathel and Tommy Coleman, and The Philip A. and Lynn Straus Foundation.

Opening events are sponsored by Sotheby's.