Alexander Calder

Galerie Cramer, Geneva

Galerie Blanche, Stockholm

Ann-Margaret Lindell, Stockholm (acquired from the above in 1952)

Private Collection, Stockholm

Sale: Sotheby’s, London, Contemporary Art, 25 October 2005, Lot 231

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner 

Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Bewogen-Beweging, 1961 

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the yellow is slightly darker in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals specks of loss to the original paint on the base. There is light oxidation in places on the branches. No restoration is apparent under ultra-violet light.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

A wonderful standing mobile with an evocative title, Branches sans Feuilles was executed in 1946, the first year after the war, and the year that Alexander Calder returned to Paris from the USA. Created with delicate, scientific precision and a virtuoso command of his materials, much of Calder’s work from this time consists of small scale objects created from scraps of foraged metal made scarce owing to the war effort. Indeed, created with tendrils of piano wire on an intimate scale, Branches sans Feuilles is a delicate feat of balance that possesses a remarkable horizontal wing span. Though very much aligned to the larger sculpture, Untitled (Mobile with N Degrees of Freedom) (1946) in terms of composition, the present work provokes a greater degree of natural allusion owing to its lyrical title which translates as ‘Branches without Leaves’. Undoubtedly organic in movement and composition, this extraordinary piece combines mechanical brilliance with natural poesis.

Renowned for his architectonic abstract sculptures, Calder captures balance and a sophisticated structure in this mobile. Horizontally spread wires hover in the air attached one to the other while a network of wire armatures delicately balance on a primary coloured tripod base. Calder’s interest in colour and form could be associated with a visit to Mondrian’s studio in 1930, marking a turning point for the artist and prompting his first engagement with pure abstraction. Since this formative moment, the concept of form, its placement in space, and its mobility and fluctuating balance, underlined Calder’s ‘system of the Universe.’ As the artist went on to explain, “What I mean is that the idea of detached bodies floating in space, of different sizes and densities, perhaps of different colours and temperatures, and surrounded and interlarded with wisps of gaseous condition, and some at rest, while others move in peculiar manners, seems to me the ideal source of form” (Alexander Calder, ‘What Abstract Art Means to Me’, Museum of Modern Art Bulletin 18, No. 3, Spring 1951, pp. 8-9).

Though Calder was born into a respected family of artists, his father and grandfather were sculptors and mother was a professional painter, he received his formative training in mechanical engineering before turning to art. Gifted in mathematics and familiar with the principles of machinery, Calder combined his natural analytical approach with a poetic abstract vision for the creation of his kinetic sculpture. Intriguingly, the term ‘mobile’ was coined by Marcel Duchamp after he visited Calder’s studio in 1931 where he saw the artist’s first motorised three-dimensional sculptures. Witnessing these formative abstract works and their capacity for movement and flux, Duchamp famously appropriated and modified the adjective word ‘mobile’ for use as a noun specifically in relation to Calder’s art.

During the year of this work’s creation, the acclaimed philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote his famous essay for Calder’s landmark exhibition at Galerie Louis Carré in Paris. In his text, Sartre poetically aligned Calder’s sculptures to the natural world: “A Mobile: a little local fiesta; an object defined by its movement and non-existent without it; a flower that withers as soon as it comes to a standstill; a pure stream of movement in the same way as there are pure streams of light. Sometimes Calder amuses himself by imitating a new form. He once gave me an ironwinged bird of paradise. It takes only a little warm air to brush against it as it escapes from the window and, with a little click, the bird smoothes its feathers, rises up, spreads its tail, nods its crested head, rolls and pitches and then, as if responding to an unseen signal, slowly turns right around, its wings outspread. But most of the time he imitates nothing, and I know no art less untruthful than his” (Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Les Mobiles des Calder’ in: Exhibition Catalogue, Paris, Galerie Louis Carré, Alexander Calder: Mobiles, Stabiles, Constellations, 1946, p. 19). Undoubtedly corroborating this interpretation, Branches sans Feuilles, possesses an organic structure, anchored by its strong yet elegant tree-like silhouette. Swaying like leafless branches, these fine biomorphic stems are delicate and fragile, appearing as a skeleton of simplified lines drawn in space. Calder’s success at Galerie Louis Carré in 1946 denoted a pivotal turning point for the artist’s return to Europe, and was succeeded by numerous commissions and important exhibitions. Thus, not only does this sculpture deftly celebrate the equilibrium of form suspended in air, Branches sans Feuilles marks the inauguration of a new seminal stage in Calder’s practice.