Streetcar

Description

A leading exponent of kinetic art, Alexander Calder revolutionized sculpture by creating suspended abstract forms that were named “mobiles” by the artist Marcel Duchamp. Describing them as “detached bodies floating in space,” Calder produced works that are perpetually in motion, through a system of weights and counterbalances, as they move in response to subtle air currents. Embracing the rhythms of modern life, Calder’s Streetcar transforms a noisy mode of urban transportation into a restrained, slowed composition of biomorphic shapes made from industrial materials.

Streetcar

Alexander Calder

1951

Accession Number

109274

Medium

Sheet steel, brass, wire, and paint

Dimensions

106.7 × 294.6 cm (42 × 116 in.)

Classification

sculpture

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Gift of Florene May Marx and Samuel A. Marx