Alexander Calder's painterly work reveals to the viewer his fascination with the variety of forms in the world around us. The biomorphic forms evoke a sense of organic growth in nature and interweave it with Calder's abstract artistic ideas.
Parallel to his sculptural work, and also following on from earlier works, Calder created a series of gouaches during an extended stay in Aix-en-Provence in 1953, a technique that would occupy him from then on throughout the rest of his life. In these works he also varies the vocabulary and certain aspects of his metal sculptures, relating them to forms from the real world. Thus, the spiraling vortices of his early wire sculptures appear on pyramids (a recurring motif after a flight over Egypt) or are found next to red suns (impressions of the fiery sunrises in Guatemala). Boulders, solar systems, and cacti are the starting points for his moving lines, which become arabesques, spheres, and layers of bold stripes. As variable as the formal canon of Calder's painting is, his palette presents itself as constant: "I have chiefly limited myself to the use of black and white as being the most disparate colours. Red is the colour most opposed to both of these—and then, finally, the other primaries. The secondary colours and intermediate shades serve only to confuse and muddle the distinctness and clarity." (Alexander Calder "What Abstract Art Means to Me", 1951).
