From 24 June to 29 October 2017, Musée Soulages is devoting an exhibition to Alexander Calder (1898-1976), one of the greatest sculptors of the twentieth century.

Creator of famous sculptures in motion, particularly the mobile, he was the «king of wire» who invented pre-war wire sculpture and who modestly built a miniature circus which was admired by the Parisian avant-garde. He then quite naturally went on to embrace the Parisian abstract art world and its great figures such as Mondrian, Léger and Arp. During the last fifteen years of his life, Calder lived and worked in his studio in Saché (Touraine) creating monumental metal sculptures designed for cities and buildings around the world.

The exhibition of between 60 and 80 works will feature: - sculptures (Mobiles, Stabiles, «wire» sculptures), gouache paintings and drawings from the Pompidou Centre, the Calder Foundation (New York), the Fondation Maeght, French and foreign museums, private collections and also from galleries including Maeght for a monumental work in the garden in front of the museum. - portraits of the artist done by great photographers such as Ugo Mulas, Gilles Ehrmann, Marc Vaux, André Kertesz, and others.

Calder Alexander (1898-1976) © 2017 Calder Foundation New York / ADAGP, Paris Musée National d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris – AM1993-59 Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist.RMN-Grand Palais / Philippe MigeatThe event is unique in that it presents works that have rarely been exhibited. Room after room, the exhibition will recount, on a themed basis, a full and innovative career, from 1925 to 1976, in an educational way suitable for all audiences.

Alexander Calder is one of the undisputed masters of world sculpture, from the smallest to the biggest scale: the title Calder. Forgeron de géantes libellules (Forger of gigantic dragonflies) conveys an oxymoron using a turn of phrase borrowed from André Masson’s poem. Not only the lightness, the airiness and the metal that are assembled, at once a delicate world and its instability between earth and sky, the means to find a precious balance while exalting motion, but also an expression of metal, ductile and inventive, of inventions, salvaged materials and colours (especially with a set of gouaches, less well known, in a specific setting). The harmonies of these movements lead back to the music that Calder was particularly fond of, as evidenced by his interest in the music of his friend Edgard Varèse.