Artist: Alexander Calder (1898-1976) American

Medium: Lithograph, 1974

Dimensions: 35” x 29.5” Framed, 25” x 19” Unframed

The inimitable simplistic style of a Calder painting with bold colors and stark shapes. Sunburst is executed in a bold vermillion with concentric circles centering the piece. A beautiful piece by the modern art icon.

Alexander Calder was born in Philadelphia, the grandson of a Scottish sculptor. His father and mother were artists too. As a child he used wire and other materials to sculpt his famous Cirque Calder and jewelry. He engaged in two-dimensional work as a way to examine ideas about color, space and composition. His painting brilliantly organizes and contextualizes his ideas about movement and the relationships of objects within what he called the system of the universe. The forms he primarily relied on in his abstract paintings were circles, spheres and discs, which, he said, “represent more than what they just are.” But he also created a unique language of shapes resembling triangles, anvils and boomerangs. He painted mainly with black, white and red. Calder painted throughout his career, beginning in the early 1920s.