Hauser & Wirth Brings Alexander Calder’s Stunning Outdoor Sculptures to Gstaad

Calder made these unique large works towards the end of his career.

Looking for summer plan, involving seeing art al fresco? Well, here’s one: this July. Hauser & Wirth is launching an outdoor exhibition of large-scale sculptural works by the great Alexander Calder in Gstaad.

This unique exhibition will feature six Calder works from the 1960s and 1970s, towards the end of his career, during which he experimented with huge forms and large-form kinetic sculpture. Crucially, the show will mark the first time that this part of Calder’s oeuvre is exhibited in Switzerland.

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Alexander Calder, 3 flèches blanches (1965). Photo ©2016 Calder Foundation, New York / DACS London Courtesy Calder Foundation, New York / Art Resource, New York and Hauser & Wirth.

“We are elated to be working closely with the Calder Foundation once again, especially on such an ambitious project,” James Koch, executive director at Hauser & Wirth, told artnet News. “The landscape of Gstaad is particularly breathtaking, and I am excited to see how the dramatic backdrop synergizes with Calder’s sculptures, drawing out and highlighting issues of form and space that the artist has so powerfully deployed in these tremendous works,” he added.

One work, titled 3 Flèches Blanches (1965), will be on view in public for the first time since it was exhibited in as part of a Calder retrospective in Turin in 1983. Since then, it has been installed in the Seagram Building in New York, which was designed by the architect Mies van de Rohe.

“My grandfather reset the traditional relationship between volume and void with his monumental sculptures,” Alexander S. C. Rower, grandson of the artist and president of the Calder Foundation, said in a statement. “Installed against the mountainous backdrop of Gstaad, these works will surely surprise viewers as they harmonize in unpredictable ways with their surroundings,” he added.

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Alexander Calder, Tripes (1974). Photo ©2016 Calder Foundation, New York / DACS London Courtesy Calder Foundation, New York / Art Resource, New York and Hauser & Wirth.

“Alexander Calder in Gstaad”, which coincides with “Calder & Fischli/Weiss” at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, will include one standing “mobile” and five “stabiles,” installed around the picturesque city.

Toward the end of his career, Calder began making large-scale sculpture for public spaces, museums, and universities around the world. Although these works are rendered in industrial materials, the results have all the elegance and delicacy of his previous work.

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Alexander Calder, Untitled (1976). Photo ©2016 Calder Foundation, New York / DACS London Courtesy Calder Foundation, New York / Art Resource, New York and Hauser & Wirth.

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Alexander Calder, Six Planes Escarpé (1967). Photo ©2016 Calder Foundation, New York / DACS London Courtesy Calder Foundation, New York / Art Resource, New York and Hauser & Wirth.

“Alexander Calder in Gstaad” will be on view in Gstaad from July- September 2016.


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