The Calder Sculpture

In 1932 Philadelphia-born Alexander Calder created the first of his moving sculptures, which were named "mobiles" by fellow artist Marcel Duchamp. The ingenuity, inventiveness, and humor of Calder's' mobiles have made them one of the most popular, enjoyable, and accessible forms of abstract sculpture. They are suspended from a central support, to which are attached various cantilevered arms bearing brightly colored biomorphic shapes. Sensitively balanced, the forms are set into motion by random air currents and seem to dance before the viewer in endless combinations. This work, a gift of W. Hawkins Ferry, was made in Calder's studio in Roxbury, Connecticut, for the Grosse Pointe Library. While the play here of pure colored shapes and supports, placed at various heights and angles, is typical of Calder's mobiles, the steel wire that swoops into midair without a shape at its tip is a particularly whimsical and unusual feature. The mobile adds color and movement to the airy space of the main reading room of this library, which is the only building designed by famed Hungarian-American architect Marcel Breuer (b. 1902) to be found in the Detroit area.

(Source: Art in Detroit Public Places by Dennis Alan Nawrocki with Thomas J. Hollerman. Copyright 1980)