Alexander Calder: Childhood Sculpture





	Dog, 1909 brass sheet 2 1/4 x 4 1/2 x 1 in. 5.7 x 11.4 x 2.5 cm Private Collection © 1998 Estate of Alexander Calder/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York	"Mother and Father were all for my efforts to build things myself -- they approved of the homemade." - Alexander Calder from Calder: An Autobiography with Pictures, 1966.

	Born in Lawton, Pennsylvania in 1898, Alexander Calder was the son of two artists -- his father a sculptor, his mother a painter. At age eight, Calder was given his first set of tools, and though his family traveled a great deal during his youth, he always seemed to have a workshop in the family home. Two early examples of Calder's craftsmanship are the Christmas gift sculptures he made for his parents in 1909: a duck and a dog, both made from brass sheet. The duck, perhaps a forerunner of his later kinetic sculptures, rocks back and forth when tapped gently. Calder and his family spent a number of years in California. When his father, Stirling Calder, was appointed acting chief of sculpture for the Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1912, the family moved to San Francisco. Calder graduated from San Francisco's Lowell High School in 1915.
		Duck, 1909 brass sheet 1 3/4 x 4 1/4 x 2 in. 4.4 x 10.8 x 5.1 cm Private Collection © 1998 Estate of Alexander Calder/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
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	Copyright © 1998 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art