Black Dots

Alexander Calder arrived in Paris in 1926 and soon forged an inventive new artistic path with caricature wire portraits and animals; he even produced a full circus environment in which he also performed. In the early 1930s, Calder began to make unconventional sculptures from flat pieces of steel, which he cut into biomorphic forms reminiscent of the work of his friends Joan Miró and Jean Arp. He bent, welded, and painted the steel pieces, assembling them into fixed (“stabile”) or moving (“mobile”) constructions, like Black Dots. These revolutionary works, presented without a traditional pedestal and often suspended from above, allowed Calder to explore the organic nature of artistic form as it continually shifted and evolved in the environment in which it was installed.