(Philadelphia 1898–1976 New York)
Circus, 1931, signed and dated Calder 31,
gouache and ink on paper, 49.5 x 64.8 cm, framed

This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York, under application number ‘A08391’.

Provenance:
Perls Gallery, New York
through successive cessions to present owner –
Private Collection, Israel

Alexander Calder‘s gouache, Circus presents an intimate view into the artist‘s fascination with the circus. This interest culminated in the iconic “Calder’s Circus”, a group of about 55 mechanical performers – acrobats and animals – created between 1926 and 1931 and put on indefinite loan from the artist to the Whitney in 1970. Over that stretch of 44 years Alexander Calder (with his wife, Louisa, at the Victoria supplying circus music) staged performances for all the crowned heads of the art world, with Mondrian, Miró, Cocteau, Pascin, Léger, Pevsner and Arp among the earliest fans in the bleachers.
The New York Times, 20 April 1972

* Alexander Calder (1898-1976). Calder‘s Circus, (1926-1931). Wire, wood, metal, cloth, yarn, paper, cardboard, leather, string, rubber tubing, corks, buttons, rhinestones, pipe cleaners, and bottle caps, 54 × 94 1/4 × 94 1/4 in. (137.2 × 239.4 × 239.4 cm)

© Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from a public fundraising campaign in May 1982. One half of the funds was contributed by the Robert Wood Johnson Jr. Charitable Trust. Additional major donations were given by The Lauder Foundation; the Robert Lehman Foundation, Inc.; the Howard and Jean Lipman Foundation, Inc.; an anonymous donor; The T. M. Evans Foundation, Inc.; MacAndrews & Forbes Group, Incorporated; the DeWitt Wallace Fund, Inc.; Martin and Agneta Gruss; Anne Phillips; Mr. and Mrs. Laurance S. Rockefeller; the Simon Foundation, Inc.; Marylou Whitney; Bankers Trust Company; Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth N. Dayton; Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz; Irvin and Kenneth Feld; Flora Whitney Miller. More than 500 individuals from 26 states and abroad also contributed to the campaign. 83.36.1-72