HONG KONG.- Sotheby’s S|2 is delighted to present Alexander Calder: Imagining the Universe – A Selling Exhibition at Sotheby’s Hong Kong Gallery from 12 to 25 September 2015. This exhibition explores the power of Calder’s imagination through his innovative and inventive body of work. Calder’s uniquely enchanting forms characterise him as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, and S|2 is honoured to showcase an important selection of his all encompassing sculptures and gouaches. Featuring 20 works executed between the late 1920s up until the year of the artist’s death in 1976, this show explores a broad spectrum of Calder’s acclaimed career, including works across the media of wire sculpture, hanging mobiles, standing mobiles and works on paper.

Clare Cosman, Gallery Director, Sotheby’s Hong Kong Gallery, says: “We are honoured to bring to Hong Kong this wide-ranging array of important works by one of the 20th century's great creators, Alexander Calder. In this expansive context, these pieces offer a rare opportunity to engage with Calder’s work, created throughout his prolific and enduring career”

Miety Heiden, Head of Contemporary Private Sales, North America, Sotheby’s, says: “Building on the success of Alexander Calder: Works on Paper from 1930 to 1976 presented in our New York gallery in 2013, this is S|2’s second selling exhibition dedicated to Calder. The beauty of Calder’s work is that it speaks to audiences worldwide and we are thrilled to open a new and exciting exhibition celebrating the legendary artist in our Hong Kong gallery space.”

Alexander Calder (1898 – 1976)
Born in 1898 in Lawnton, Pennsylvania, Alexander Calder was the son of a painter and sculptor. As a young child, he was always influenced by craft and began sculpting toys and jewelry for his sister’s dolls. Calder’s interest in the arts continued into his twenties when he joined the Art Students League in New York to study painting and drawing. He later moved to Paris in 1926, where he created his famed Cirque Calder, a miniature wire circus that he performed amongst his social cohorts.

Calder was heavily influenced by abstraction and explored shape, movement and space as subject matter. By navigating the boundaries of artistic precedent, Calder's groundbreaking kinetic sculptures garnered the new term 'mobiles’ in 1931, coined by his esteemed contemporary Marcel Duchamp. The breadth of Calder’s oeuvre grew to include wire sculpture, mobiles, stabiles, bronzes, jewelry, painting, works on paper and more.

Calder’s first retrospective was held at the George Walter Vincent Smith Gallery, Springfield, MA in 1938 and soon after he became the youngest artist to ever receive a survey exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1943. He represented the U.S. at the Venice Biennale in 1952 and later held retrospectives at such renowned institutions as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York in 1964, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris in 1965 and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in 1976, to name a few. The success Calder experienced during his lifetime is unparalleled and he is remembered today as among the most important artists in the dialogue of modern and contemporary art.