Although Calder's father and grandfather were both sculptors, Calder also painted throughout his artistic career. His paintings are semi-abstract, with distinct shapes and elements combined.
"The idea of abstract bodies floating in space, of different sizes and densities, perhaps of different colors and temperatures, and surrounded and interlarded with wisps of gaseous condition, and some at rest." Alexander Calder ("What Abstract Art Means to Me," Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, vol. 18, no. 3, 1951, p. 9.)
The dynamic and colourful painting was created in 1955, the year the artist and his wife Louisa were on a three month voyage to India.
The two discs in the painting might relate to an experience Calder had in June 1922, when he was working as a mechanic on the passenger ship H. F. Alexander. While the ship sailed from San Francisco to New York City, Calder slept on deck and "It was early one morning on a calm sea, off Guatemala, when over my couch—a coil of rope—I saw the beginning of a fiery red sunrise on one side and the moon looking like a silver coin on the other."
This work, which was a gift from Alexander Calder to his good friend and neighbour Andi Schiltz in Roxbury, Connecticut, has been in the same private collection for more than fifty years.
