ALEXANDER CALDER | Necklace

Collection of Ruth Page, New York (acquired directly from the artist)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1970

Greenwich, Bruce Museum, The Mobile, The Stabile, The Animal: Wit in the Art of Alexander Calder, September - December 1995, cat. no. 6, illustrated

Sotheby’s is honored to present lots 266-270, an exquisite selection of five pieces of Alexander Calder jewelry highlighting the artist’s highly acclaimed and diverse oeuvre. The carefully assembled group comes from the Collection of Herbert Lust and is a rare selection of fresh-to-auction gems which have been exhibited extensively as top examples from Calder’s one-of-a-kind wearable works of art. Calder’s avant-garde creations in brass and silver converged closely with the aesthetic of the modern age, yet they remained personal and unmistakably Calder. He possessed an uncanny ability to synthesize a variety of influences from the world around him to create often simple, always meaningful, and ultimately modern jewelry. Calder worked extensively between mobiles, stabiles, constellations, early whimsical wire works and an impressive output of over 1,800 pieces of jewelry. For Calder, these carefully hammered and chiseled metal objects served as a way to bestow gifts on his beloved wife, relatives and friends throughout his life. Interestingly, when a mobile by the artist is seen packed away in a crate, it is a flat, lifeless object but once hung all of the components take their carefully assigned positions and the mobile becomes animated, three-dimensional, and imbued with motion. The artist’s necklaces, bracelets, and brooches experience the same fate lying dormant inside a jewelry box and then once out in the world these pieces rely on the body of the wearer to activate them from a static state to one of fullness and life. The present selection was owned by Herbert Lust’s late wife, Virginia Lust, who was a gallerist in Chicago and New York specializing in Alberto Giacometti, HansBellmer, French Surrealism and Robert Indiana. While in Chicago, she had a very close friend and collector by the name of Ruth Page known formally as a world-famous dancer and choreographer. In 1932, Page and the sculptor Isamu Noguchi began a long and passionate love affair, which inspired one of the artist’s most celebrated sculptures titled Miss Expanding Universe, now in the collection of the Art Institute Chicago. As a gift, Noguchi presented Page with two pieces of jewelry he had purchased from his friend Alexander Calder. Years later in 1970, Page would re-gift the necklace, Lot #, to her friend Virginia in honor of her 40^th birthday. The other, a bracelet, Lot #, was purchased by Herbert from Page as a birthday present to his wife. Through this web of friendship, these great pieces of jewelry found their way into the cherished Lust collection, where they have stayed ever since. One can imagine the conversations that were shared between artists and friends over the years especially as Lust enjoyed lunch with Calder and his wife at their Roxbury home before purchasing the mobile brooch, Lot #, as another thoughtful gift for his wife. A veritable master of all genres, media and scale, Alexander Calder has proven himself to be one of the most iconic and idiosyncratic artists of the 20^th Century which is perfectly captured by this group of five wearable sculptures meant to be enjoyed both in and out of the jewelry box.



“Calder’s jewelry may be seen as a sort of Surrealistic strategy to entrap the wearer into participating in an art performance, even to become bewitched. To wear the jewelry is to induce dreams and to become metamorphosed. It is typical of Calder and his art to be more allusive than first meets the eye.”
Mark Rosenthal in Alexander S. C. Rower, Ed., Calder Jewelry, New York 2007, p. 67



This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number A16647.