Alexander Calder

The second exhibition in SFMOMA’s Calder gallery, Scaling Up takes a close look at the small-scale and surprisingly tactile beginnings of the artist’s most sizable works. While best known for his hanging mobiles, Calder also created an astounding assortment of standing sculptures that delight the eye and engage the mind with dynamic contours, soaring lines, and, in some cases, moving components. With more than a dozen loans drawn from the Fisher Collection and the Calder Foundation, the exhibition introduces visitors to the multi-step methods of enlargement that Calder developed to transform handmade models into monumental sculptures. Featuring indoor and outdoor artworks from the 1950s to the 1970s, the exhibition coincides with the fiftieth anniversaries of The Kite that Never Flew (1967) and Intermediate maquette for Trois disques (1967), and includes rarely seen working models related to these and other celebrated sculptures.

Header image: Alexander Calder: Scaling Up (installation view, SFMOMA), 2017; photo: Katherine Du Tiel