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Alexander Calder, Untitled, unknown date, color
lithograph, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Irving and
Rose Dorfman 1987.42.1
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The Cosmos
Calder
was interested
in the cosmos from a young age. In an interview during the
1950s, he talked
about his early fascination with eighteenth-century models
of the planetary system (orreries).
In 1922, before Calder
decided to study art, he worked on a ship sailing from New York to San
Francisco via the Panama Canal. He liked to sleep on deck in large coils
of rope. One day, he witnessed an awe-inspiring natural event:
Early one
morning on a calm sea, off Guatemala...I saw the beginning of a fiery
red sunrise on one side and the moon looking like a silver coin on the
other. Of the whole trip this impressed me most of all; it left me with
a lasting sensation of the solar system.
 
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