Kornfeld · Lot 13
Untitled
Oil on canvas
Original catalogue wording
Untitled
oil on canvas
Catalogue period : 2023-06-16
Published result : 180000 CHF
Hammer price, excluding fees
Estimate : CHF 200000
View the lot at the auction house ↗SwissArtGallery · Documented identity
Alexander Calder
Born : 1898Died : 1976Documented citizenships : United States
The documented singularity of Alexander “Sandy” Calder lies in particular in a practice in which wire, used as a means of “drawing”, extends into articulated abstract sculptures. An American artist, sculptor, painter and scenographer, he was born in 1898 and died in 1976. Marcel Duchamp proposed the term “mobiles” for these sculptures, referring to ideas of movement and the mobile; Calder adopted it.
After graduating in mechanical engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1919, Calder entered the Art Students League of New York in 1923 to continue his artistic training. In New York, he produced illustrations of sporting events and reports on tours by the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for the newspaper National Police Gazette. He also drew animals, whose sketches were published in 1926 under the title Animal Sketchings. Settling in Paris in 1926, he created articulated toys, which he presented at the Salon des Humoristes the following year.
From 1930, he retained wire while adding more abstract forms to it. In 1932, at the Galerie Vignon, he presented thirty articulated abstract sculptures made from wire and pieces of iron, as well as rods and plates. These works, painted in black and white and sometimes accented with one or two areas of flat colour, mark an important stage in his sculptural work. The Museum of Modern Art organised a retrospective of his work in 1943; an exhibition in Paris, with a foreword by Jean-Paul Sartre, followed in 1946.
Calder also designed large-scale works for public spaces: in 1958, he made a ten-metre-high mobile in black steel with five arms for UNESCO’s Paris headquarters. In the mid-1950s, he settled in Saché, in Indre-et-Loire, where he established a new studio on the Carroi site in 1962. The commune received Totem from him, a mobile sculpture inaugurated in his presence on 30 June 1974. His work also includes printmaking: for the book Fêtes, published by Éditions Maeght in 1971, he made etchings while Jacques Prévert wrote a text about his work. A sales sheet finally describes a 1973 gouache on a preparatory drawing in black ink, presented as the original of a lithograph published as a supplement to the Galerie Maeght exhibition catalogue in Zurich.
This profile brings together identity references for Alexander Calder and paintings, drawings and works on paper documented in auction catalogues.
7 references are documented at Kornfeld, Germann. Each record links to its source; the amounts are not a general valuation of the artist’s work.
Works recorded at auction
Kornfeld · Lot 13
Untitled
Gouache
Original catalogue wording
Untitled
gouache
Catalogue period : 2020-09-18
Published result : 54000 CHF
Hammer price, excluding fees
Estimate : CHF 60000
View the lot at the auction house ↗Kornfeld · Lot 14
Poster Design for the Exhibition at Galerie Maeght, Zurich, 1973
Gouache
Original catalogue wording
Entwurf für das Plakat der Ausstellung in der Galerie Maeght, Zürich 1973
gouache
Catalogue period : 2020-09-18
Published result : 34000 CHF
Hammer price, excluding fees
Estimate : CHF 30000
View the lot at the auction house ↗Kornfeld · Lot 616
Untitled
Gouache
Original catalogue wording
Ohne Titel
gouache
Catalogue period : 2020-09-17
Published result : 17000 CHF
Hammer price, excluding fees
Estimate : CHF 7500
View the lot at the auction house ↗Kornfeld · Lot 617
Untitled
Watercolour
Original catalogue wording
Ohne Titel
watercolour
Catalogue period : 2020-09-17
Published result : 13000 CHF
Hammer price, excluding fees
Estimate : CHF 6000
View the lot at the auction house ↗
Germann
Untitled (Pyramides and Discs), 1975
Gouache und Tusche auf Papier.
Date to be documented
Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed
View the lot at the auction house ↗
Germann
Du
Gouache.
Date to be documented
Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed
View the lot at the auction house ↗Sources and references
- Reference record
- ARTIC · Reference link only; institutional text and images are not reproduced.
- CULTURAITALIA-ICCU · CC-BY-SA; ICCU CulturaItalia
- ICCD-ArCo · CC-BY-4.0; Ministero della Cultura / ICCD-ArCo. Reference link only; no image copied.
- NDL · NDL Terms of Use (source attribution)
- Documentary source
- Documentary source
- Documentary source
SwissArtGallery documentary note based on the cited sources. Titles, media and qualifications are provided in the profile language; the original catalogue wording remains available in each record.
Documentation updated : 2026-10-19