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DOYLE NEW YORK AUCTIONED TEN WORKS BY ALEXANDER CALDER FROM THE ESTATE OF MRS. WILLIAM B. F. DREW ON NOVEMBER 12, 2008
Works Presented to William Drew by Life-Long Friend Alexander Calder Totaled $1,198,437
On November 12, 2008, Doyle New York offered ten works by Alexander Calder from the Estate of Mrs. William B. F. Drew. Calder and William Drew were close friends from their student days at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ. As a student of mechanical engineering, Calder learned the technical skills which he later used to achieve the structural finesse of his mobiles. Writing of his days at Stevens in the memoir Calder: An Autobiography with Pictures, Calder says explicitly that "my best friend was Bill Drew." This friendship persisted for many years, with Calder giving sculptures, drawings and paintings as gifts to the family.
With competitive bidding from an international audience bidders in the salesroom, on the telephones, and via the Internet, all ten lots sold -- totaling $1,198,437 against a pre-sale estimate of $715,000-1,080,000.
All of the Calders from the Drew Estate date from 1944 and earlier. Some of the paintings are, indeed, very early: three of them probably derive from his first body of work as a painter. With their echoes of French fauvism by way of the Ashcan School, these paintings are quite unusual for Calder, although motifs from his later work are already discernible. Their depiction of sporting events (two games of tennis at the Forest Hills Stadium and one game of golf in the country with his friends, including William Drew) looks forward to Calder's interest in games, the circus, zoos and other genres of spectacle.
The works from the 1930s are iconic Calder. Two studies of biomorphic forms, painted in 1933, reflect his affiliation with Abstraction-Création and his friendship with Jean Arp. The Circus, Horse and Trainer and Lion Cage, both from 1931, were produced around the same period as the Cirque Calder, a miniature travelling circus of wire sculptures that made Calder famous in the international avant-garde. Calder wrote of his wire sculptures as "three-dimensional line drawing." These two drawings clearly show the origins of his sculptural method in pen-and-ink:
the animals in The Circus, Horse and Trainer and Lion Cage, with their unbroken lines and half-figural, half-calligraphic swirls, are wire sculptures on paper.
When the Drews' daughter, Rosario, was born in 1941, Calder presented the family with an extraordinary mobile made of brass and stone. Connoisseurs of Calder will recognize this sculpture, with its depictions of flowers, plant tendrils and fish, as among his most playful and sensitive work.
A Manhattan (1944) is a quintessentially New York image based on the ingredients in the Manhattan cocktail, complete with a jigger, martini glass and cherry. Calder's unique wit is fully evident in the painting. The entire painting is a visual pun: what appears to be a lemon slice above the martini glass is, in fact, a crescent moon. It is quite likely that Calder is referencing the 1935 film Moon over Manhattan, directed by Al Christie. A Manhattan was exhibited as part of the travelling exhibition Calder's Universe, from October 1976 to February 1977.
Doyle New York was especially pleased to present this collection of work by the leading American modernist at a time when he is being celebrated more than ever, with Alexander Calder: The Paris Years, 1926-33 currently on view at the Whitney Museum
of American Art.
NEXT AUCTION OF MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART
May 2009
CONSIGNMENTS ARE CURRENTLY BEING ACCEPTED
To have your property evaluated for possible consignment in the next Modern and Contemporary Art auction, please contact:Harold E. Porcher, 212-427-4141, ext. 249, paintings@DoyleNewYork.com
CATALOGUE
Subscriptions Department, 212-427-4141, ext. 257, subscriptions@DoyleNewYork.com
View the November 12, 2008 catalogue
MEDIA
CONTACT
Louis LeB. Webre, Vice President, Marketing and Media, 212-427-4141,
ext 232, louis@DoyleNewYork.com
Images and interviews are available upon request.
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