Alexander Calder

The Pace Gallery, New York
Private Collection
Sale: Christie's, London, Contemporary Art, 6 December 1990, Lot 548
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

St. Louis, Greenberg Gallery; St. Louis, Missouri Botanical Garden, Calder in Retrospect, 1983

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There are several losses towards the edges and a few isolated losses in places towards the neck. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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Executed in 1973, The Red Stag is at once a brilliant example of Alexander Calder’s absolute mastery of metal and its possibilities in the realm of art.  Created three years before the artist’s death, the present work demonstrates his profound understanding of the medium he worked with, and his expertise in creating a graceful equilibrium between the coarse materiality of steel, and the seemingly effortless balance he achieved in his use of it. Elegantly balancing a single, small sheet of metal on a larger vertical section, Calder created the figure of a small stag, a work that can be seen as being part of a wider body of mobiles and stabiles representing animals which spans his entire career.

Calder’s love of animals can be traced back to his childhood, when as an eleven year old he fashioned two small figures of a duck and a dog which he then gave to his parents as Christmas presents. Some years later, after moving to New York to study at the Art Students League, Calder worked at the National Police Gazette where he was given the task of illustrating sporting events and the famous ‘Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus’. Fascinated by the elegant movements of the circus’ acrobats and the vast space of the performance, Calder felt compelled to create his own Cirque Calder, which became one of his most well-known works and which he showed in multiple performances during his travels around the world. During his National Police Gazette years, one of the things Calder enjoyed the most was going to the zoo in either the Bronx or Central Park in New York and quickly sketching their animals in movement. The resulting, brilliantly executed illustrations were subsequently put together in a small publication entitled Animal Sketching, which amongst impressions of dogs, cats and other animals included twenty-three drawings of deer in poses that ranged from energetic movement to peaceful sitting.

Shortly after the book was published Calder travelled to Paris, where the international avant-garde immediately embraced his ingenious wire sculptures and complex Cirque Calder performances. Calder felt the urge to explore the territory of abstraction, which was intensified by a 1930 visit to Mondrian’s studio, where he was impressed by the actuation of space. He used this experience as a point of departure to develop the unique and revolutionary language he is so well-known for. This newfound lyrical and abstract vocabulary, however, did not prevent the artist from continuing his expansive survey of the animal kingdom. As early as 1937 Calder created his first stabile enlarged from a maquette, which he called Devil Fish. A replica of this elegant creature, dating from 1964, is now kept in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and many of the artist’s joyous interpretations of animals belong in the collections of prominent museums around the world.

Elegantly poised on a first impression, Calder’s The Red Stag reveals the artist’s confident technique through the lively motion of the animal’s head. Sensitive to the most minimal air current, the stag’s head dances cheerfully, and the artist’s choice of a bold red hue for the sculpture - a colour he favoured in his creations - adds to its dynamic tone. In his 1935 essay for the exhibition at The Renaissance Society of the University in Chicago James Johnson Sweeney declared how “there is an element of the piper of Hamelin’s tune in the purring and jigging of a roomful of his ‘mobiles’ that calls the child out of us in spite of ourselves. We grin and enjoy it” (James Johnson Sweeney, ‘Alexander Calder’s Mobiles’ in: Exhibition catalogue, Chicago, The Renaissance Society of The University of Chicago, Mobiles by Alexander Calder, 1935, n.p., online resource). This is certainly the case with The Red Stag, an outstanding example of the artist’s late work and a reflection of his extraordinary vivacity and creative energy.