Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder, known as Sandy, was born in Philadelphia in 1898 into a long line of sculptors, being part of the fourth generation to take up the art form. Constructing objects from a very young age, his first known art tool was a pair of pliers. At eight, Calder was creating jewelry for his sister's dolls from beads and copper wire. Over the next few years, as his family moved to Pasadena, Philadelphia, New York, and San Francisco, he crafted small animal figures and game boards from scavenged wood and brass. Calder's interest initially led not to art, but to mechanical engineering and applied kinetics, which he studied at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey (1915-1919).
Many artists made contour line drawings on paper, but Calder was the first to use wire to create three-dimensional line "drawings" of people, animals, and objects. These "linear sculptures" introduced line into sculpture as an element unto itself.
Calder shifted from figurative linear sculptures in wire to abstract forms in motion by creating the first mobiles. Composed of pivoting lengths of wire counterbalanced with thin metal fins, the appearance of the entire piece was randomly arranged and rearranged in space by chance simply by the air moving the individual parts.
He redefined sculpture by introducing the element of movement, first through performances of his mechanical Calder's Circus and later with motorized works, and, finally, with hanging works called "mobiles." In addition to his abstract mobiles, Calder also created static sculptures, called "stabiles," as well as paintings, mostly in gouache, as well as drawings, including illustrations for books, and prints, and was an inventive designer of jewellery.
Alexander Calder died in New York in 1976.
亚历山大·考尔德于1898年出生于费城，1976年在纽约去世。 亚历山大·考尔德（Alexander Calder）以其通过气流在空间激活的移动悬挂金属板和线材组件的创新而闻名。 这些雕塑与其巨大的户外螺栓金属板稳定性（仅仅意味着运动）使Calder成为最知名和最受欢迎的现代艺术家之一，在视觉上引人入胜，充满情感。 他还用更传统的木材和青铜材料制作了少量的雕塑，并绘制了大部分用水粉画的绘画，以及绘画，包括书籍和版画的插图，并且是一位富有创造力的珠宝设计师。
