Starfish

1939–1945

The war years: “constellations” instead of aluminium

During the Second World War Calder tries to join the Marines as a camoufleur but is rejected. Adapting to a scarcity of aluminium, he returns to carved wood in a new open form of sculpture called “constellations”.

1942

Calder earrings at the opening of “Art of This Century”

To the opening of her New York gallery, The Art of This Century, Peggy Guggenheim wears one Calder earring and one by Yves Tanguy, to show her equal loyalty to Surrealist and abstract art, which she displays in separate galleries. Calder had given her enormous silver mobile earrings, and she later commissioned from him a hammered-silver headboard that shimmered with dangling fish.

1943

The retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art

In 1943 the Museum of Modern Art hosts a Calder retrospective curated by James Johnson Sweeney and Marcel Duchamp; the show has to be extended because of the number of visitors. It is sometimes called the artist’s first retrospective.

1946

The Louis Carré show and Sartre’s essay

In 1946 a Calder show organised by Duchamp, made up mainly of hanging and standing mobiles, opens at Galerie Louis Carré in Paris; because of the postal service’s strict size limits he takes some works apart and sends them by mail. The show makes a huge impact, as does the catalogue essay by Jean-Paul Sartre.