Swizzle Sticks

1934

MoMA buys its first Calder for $60

The Museum of Modern Art buys its first Calder for $60, after talking him down from $100; the museum has championed him since the early 1930s.

1935

His first solo museum exhibition in the United States

In 1935 Calder has his first solo museum exhibition in the United States, at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago.

1936

Barr’s exhibition “Cubism and Abstract Art”

Calder is one of three Americans included in Alfred H. Barr Jr.’s 1936 exhibition “Cubism and Abstract Art”; the Museum of Modern Art had championed him since the early 1930s.

1936

Small maquettes that grow into monuments

By 1936 Calder changes his working method: he makes a small maquette, the first step toward a monumental sculpture and one he considered a sculpture in its own right, and then enlarges it with a grid from a drawing on craft paper, as his father and grandfather had done.

1937

“Mercury Fountain” in the Spanish pavilion

At the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne the Spanish pavilion includes Calder’s sculpture “Mercury Fountain”, made of sheet iron and mercury.

1938

His first retrospective, in Springfield

Calder’s first retrospective is held in 1938 at the George Walter Vincent Smith Gallery in Springfield, Massachusetts. Other accounts call the 1943 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art his first retrospective.