20th Century Animal Prints

Abstract French lithograph, circa 1980. Signed lower right. Original artwork on paper displayed on a white mat with a gold border. Mat fits a standard-size frame. Archival plasti...

COOPER'S RAINBOW is an original, hand drawn, limited edition lithograph by the American painter Wayne Cooper printed in NYC using traditional hand lithogr...

ARTIST: Salvador Dali TITLE: Rhinoceros MEDIUM: Etching SIGNED: Hand Signed PUBLISHER: Michelle Broutta, Paris EDITION NUMBER: 97/150 MEASUREMENTS: 35.4" x 25" YEAR: 1971 F...

French chromolithograph, published in 1931. Signed by artist in the plate. Printed title lower right of sheet. Plate number top right. From a French series of illustrations of sporti...

Original Holy Land TWA vintage travel poster. Artist David Klein. Size 25" x 40.5". Archival linen-backed authentic vintage TWA travel poster...

Rare print handsigned and numered by surrealist artist Leonor Fini, now rediscovered and inscreasingly esteemed with the movement of rediscovering art by women. It depicts a mytholog...

Penelope Ellis (1935-2016) Up with the Rooster Woodblock print 15 x 11 cm Provenance: From the artist's estate sale. ​Penelope Mary Ellis (1935–2016) was a British artist celebrat...

LEONOR FINI Cat on the Rings 1973 Color lithograph Ed. 157/230 12.5 x 9 inches

Original " Are You 100% American? Prove it! Buy US government bonds. Third Liberty Loan" vintage poster. This poster from World War I questions whether the viewer is genuinely A...

This Blue Dog work consists of a blue dog on a tropical background of mountains, sea, sand, and palm trees. There are various colors of butterflies and a single dragonfly. The dog i...

Ducks at Play Frank Weston Benson, American (1862–1951) Date: 1940 Etching mounted to board, signed and dated in pencil Image Size: 10 x 8 inches Size: 12 x 10 in. (30.48 x 25.4 cm)

Blocky black and white depiction of a lamb, by German artist Leonhardt Wüllfarth, c.1950. Displayed in a white mat with a gold border and fits a standard-size frame. Archival plastic...

Rale des Genets - Corn Crake French chromolithograph, published in 1931. Printed title lower right of sheet. Plate number top right. From a French series of illustrations of birds. ...

Artist: Karel Appel (1921-2006) Title: Stalking Cat Year: 1980 Medium: Silkscreen on Arches paper Edition: 80/125, plus proofs Size: 24.75 x 32.25 inches Condition: Good Inscription:...

'Bassets Griffons de Bretagne et de Vendee'. French chromolithograph, published in 1931. Signed by artist in the plate. Printed title lower right of sheet. Plate number top right. F...

Chris Forrest, American (1946 - ) - Owl Haven, Year: circa 1979, Medium: Lithograph, Signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: 300, AP 40, Image Size: 18 x 22 inches, Size: 23 in....

Original first edition printing of Scandinavia by SAS, Scandinavian Airlines System. The first edition has a greyish panel along the bottom. The poster also features the SAS logo...

Returning to the Stable. 1920. Drypoint. Appleby 64. 8 3/4 x 12 1/4 (sheet 11 7/16 x 16 1/8). Edition 100. A rich impression printed on cream laid paper wi...

Olaf Wieghorst (1899 - 1988) California, New York, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas Artist Image Size: 11 x 8.5 Frame Size: 18.5 x 14.5 Medium: Print "Indian on Horse...

Plate 20 from "Formes et couleurs; vingt planches en couleurs contenant soixante-sept motifs décoratifs" by Auguste H. Thomas. Paris: A. Levy, Librarie Centrale des Beaux-Arts, circa...

Alfred Bendiner (1899-1964) was trained as an architect but worked as an artist throughout his career. He was a noted lithographer, as well an author, muralist, and caricaturist. The...

Leonor Fini Untitled from La Grande Parade des Chats (The Great Parade of the Cats) Color lithograph on Arches paper Hand signed in pencil by the artist numbered 204/230 Published b...

Chris Forrest, American (1946 - ) - Screech Owl, Year: circa 1979, Medium: Lithograph, Signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: 300, AP XL, Image Size: ...

Photorealist flower screenprint by American artist Lowell Blair Nesbitt, signed and numbered in pencil. Title: Spotted Leopard and Iris Year: 1981 Medium: Serigraph, signed and num...

Artist: Dan May (American, 1955-) Title: "Dog Portrait II" *Signed by May in pencil lower left Year: 1997 Medium: Original Monoprint on unbranded white co...

Original Lowenbrau Munchen Vintage Poster with Iconic Lion - Conservation Linen Backed, Ready to Frame, Excellent Condition. (Löwenbräu München) The Original Lowenbrau Munchen Vintage Poster with Iconic Lion is a true collector's item. This poster features the company's iconic Gothic lion design, which has become synonymous with the brand. Conservation linen backed and in excellent condition, this poster is ready to be framed and displayed in any space. The gold and blue colors of the lion add a royal touch to the poster, making it a stunning piece of art. Perfect for beer enthusiasts and collectors, this vintage poster is a timeless treasure that celebrates the heritage of Lowenbrau Munchen. Its name is German for "lion's brew". Most Löwenbräu beers are marketed as being brewed according to the Reinheitsgebot, the Bavarian beer...

Sanglier (Wild Boar) French chromolithograph, published in 1931. Printed title lower right of sheet. Plate number top right. From a French series of ill...

Kenny Scharf Untitled from the environmental portfolio "Columbus: In Search of a New Tomorrow", 1992 Color silkscreen on Fabriano paper with blind stamp, held in the original portfol...

Raoul Dufy, French (1877 - 1953) - La Chevre Du Thibet, Year: circa 1911, Medium: Woodblock, Image Size: 8 x 7.5 inches, Size: 13 x 10 in. (33.02 x 25.4 cm), Description: From the ...

Elegant etching of pair of swans by French artist Francois Soulas, 1969. Signed in pencil lower right. Original artwork on paper displayed on a white mat with a gold border. Mat f...

Benedictus, Edouard. Relais. Plate 1. Paris, Éditions Vincent, Fréal et Cie, 1930. Original pochoir, printed by J. Saudé.

Brad Davis has exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in new York, the Hudson River Museum, the Univ...

Joan Miro Lithographier Originale (Les Peintures Sur Carton De Miro) Original Color Lithograph Year: 1965 Size: 14.5x10.5in Edition: 150 Portfolio: DLM 151-152 Publisher: Maeght Ed...

Although this work is titled Horses. It nice to think it could be (Horses in a Field in Woodstock, NY), but it was printed by Will Barnet at the Art Students League, about 1938, and Wilson, who visited Woodstock with Arnold Blanche...

Chris Forrest, American (1946 - ) - Green Winged Teal, Year: 1980, Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: 300, AP XL, Image Size: 22 x 18 inches, Size: 29 i...

A lithograph from the Marina Picasso Estate Collection after the Pablo Picasso painting "Deux Pigeons". The original painting was completed in 1960. In the 1970's after Picasso's de...

(after) Alexander Calder "Calder's Circus" offset lithograph on wove paper after drawings by the artist Published by Art in America and Perls gallery in 1964 (from drawings done in the 1930's) these range slightly in size but they are all about 13 X 17 inches (with minor variations in size as issued.) These have never been framed. The outer folio is not included just the one lithograph. James Sweeny from the introduction “The fame of Calder’s circus spread quickly between the years 1927 and 1930. All the Paris art world came to know it. It brought him his first great personal success. But what was more important, the circus also provided the first steps in Calder’s development as an original sculptor” Clive Gray wrote ”A visit to the studio of Alexander Calder led to the chance discovery of some hundred masterful circus drawings completed over thirty years ago. We publish, for the first time, a choice of sixteen from that group.” With signed introduction by Miro. These whimsical drawings, done in the style of wire sculpture, include acrobats, clowns, jugglers, trapeeze artists, an elephant, dog and lion. they are great. Alexander Calder is widely considered to be one of the most important American sculptors of the 20th century. He is best known for his colorful, whimsical abstract public sculptures and his innovative mobiles, kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents, which embraced chance in their aesthetic. Born into a family of accomplished artists, Calder's work first gained attention in Paris in the 1930s and was soon championed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, resulting in a retrospective exhibition in 1943. Major retrospectives were also held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1964) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1974). Calder’s work is in many permanent collections, most notably in the Whitney Museum of American Art, but also the Guggenheim Museum; the Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Centre Georges Pompidou. He produced many large public works, including .125 (at JFK Airport, 1957), Pittsburgh (Carnegie International prize winner 1958, Pittsburgh International Airport) Spirale (UNESCO in Paris, 1958), Flamingo and Universe (both in Chicago, 1974), and Mountains and Clouds (Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 1976). Although primarily known for his sculpture, Calder was a prodigious artist with a restless creative spirit, whose diverse practice included painting and printmaking, miniatures (such as his famous Cirque Calder), children’s book illustrations, theater set design, jewelry design, tapestry and rug works, and political posters. Calder was honored by the US Postal Service with a set of five 32-cent stamps in 1998, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously in 1977, after refusing to receive it from Gerald Ford one year earlier in protest of the Vietnam War. Calder moved to New York and enrolled at the Art Students League, studying briefly with Thomas Hart Benton, George Luks, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and John Sloan. While a student, he worked for the National Police Gazette where, in 1925, one of his assignments was sketching the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Calder became fascinated with the action of the circus, a theme that would reappear in his later work. In 1926, Calder moved to Paris, enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and established a studio at 22 rue Daguerre in the Montparnasse Quarter. In June 1929, while traveling by boat from Paris to New York, Calder met his future wife, Louisa James (1905-1996), grandniece of author Henry James and philosopher William James. They married in 1931. While in Paris, Calder met and became friends with a number of avant-garde artists, including Fernand Léger, Jean Arp, and Marcel Duchamp. Cirque Calder (on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art at present) became popular with the Parisian avant-garde. He also invented wire sculpture, or "drawing in space," and in 1929 he had his first solo show of these sculptures in Paris at Galerie Billiet. Hi! (Two Acrobats) in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art is an early example of the artist's wire sculpture. The painter Jules Pascin, a friend of Calder's from the cafes of Montparnasse, wrote the preface to the catalog. A visit to Piet Mondrian's studio in 1930, where he was impressed by the environment-as-installation, "shocked" him into fully embracing abstract art, toward which he had already been tending. Dating from 1931, Calder’s sculptures of discrete movable parts powered by motors were christened “mobiles” by Marcel Duchamp, a French pun meaning both "motion" and "motive." At the same time, Calder was also experimenting with self-supporting, static, abstract sculptures, dubbed "stabiles" by Jean Arp in 1932 to differentiate them from mobiles. Public commissions increasingly came his way in the 1960s. Notable examples are .125 for JFK Airport in 1957, Spirale for UNESCO in Paris 1958 and Trois disques, commissioned for Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Calder's largest sculpture at 25.7 meters high was El Sol Rojo, constructed outside the Aztec Stadium for the 1968 Summer Olympics "Cultural Olympiad" events in Mexico City. Many of his public works were commissioned by renowned architects; I.M. Pei commissioned his La Grande Voile (1966), a 25-ton, 40-foot high stabile for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Part of Calder's repertoire includes pivotal stage sets for more than a dozen theatrical productions, including Nucléa, Horizon, and most notably, Martha Graham’s Panorama (1935), a production of the Erik Satie symphonic drama Socrate (1936), and later, Works in Progress (1968). In addition to sculptures, Calder painted throughout his career, beginning in the early 1920s. He picked up his study of printmaking in 1925, and continued to produce illustrations for books and journals.As Calder’s professional reputation expanded in the late 1940s and 1950s, so did his production of prints. Masses of lithographs based on his gouache paintings hit the market, and deluxe editions of plays, poems, and short stories illustrated with fine art prints by Calder became available for sale. One of Calder's most celebrated and unconventional undertakings was a commission from Dallas-based Braniff International Airways to paint a full-size Douglas DC-8-62 four-engined jet as a "flying canvas." Calder created over 2,000 pieces of jewelry over the course of his career, many of them as gifts for friends and relatives. For his lifelong friend Joan Miró, he set a shard of a broken porcelain vessel in a brass ring. Peggy Guggenheim received enormous silver mobile earrings and later commissioned a hammered silver headboard...

Robert Rauschenberg Lily Scent, 1981 Lithograph 32 x 24 inches SPIII Signed

Color stencil print titled "Dog Circus" by Andrée Ruellan (1905-2006). New York, American Artists Group, Inc., circa 1936. Unsigned. Presented in an arc...

Mel Hunter, American (1927 - 2004) - Snowy Owl, Year: 1975, Medium: Lithograph, signed and dedicated in pencil, Size: 22 x 30 in. (55.88 x 76.2 cm)

Roosters Amos Yaskil Israeli (1935) Date: circa 1970 Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil Edition of 375 Image Size: 18.5 x 14 inches Size: 26.5 x 20 in. (67.31 x 50.8 cm)

Guerrilla Girls Geroge Bush 1991: Rare vintage original early 90s Guerrilla Girls poster published as a political statement in reaction to the Gulf War. Classic Guerilla Girls statem...

Chris Forrest, American (1946 - ) - Sentinel, Year: 1980, Medium: Lithograph, signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: 300, AP XL, Image Size: 23 x 18...

Foulque - Common Coot French chromolithograph, published in 1931. Printed title lower right of sheet. Plate number top right. From a French series of il...

Oiseau Bleu is a beautiful original colored xylograph on wove paper, realized by the French artist Giselle Halff between the half and the end of XX century...

Artist: Dan May (American, 1955-) Title: "Cat with a Habit" *Signed and numbered by May in pencil lower left Year: 1995 Medium: Original Screenprint on unbranded white wove paper Lim...

Reproduction of poster against signed and numbered 30/100

(after) Alexander Calder "Calder's Circus" offset lithograph on wove paper after drawings by the artist Published by Art in America and Perls gallery in 1964 (from drawings done in the 1930's) these range slightly in size but they are all about 13 X 17 inches (with minor variations in size as issued.) These have never been framed. The outer folio is not included just the one lithograph. James Sweeny from the introduction “The fame of Calder’s circus spread quickly between the years 1927 and 1930. All the Paris art world came to know it. It brought him his first great personal success. But what was more important, the circus also provided the first steps in Calder’s development as an original sculptor” Clive Gray wrote ”A visit to the studio of Alexander Calder led to the chance discovery of some hundred masterful circus drawings completed over thirty years ago. We publish, for the first time, a choice of sixteen from that group.” With signed introduction by Miro. These whimsical drawings, done in the style of wire sculpture, include acrobats, clowns, jugglers, trapeeze artists, an elephant, dog and lion. they are great. Alexander Calder is widely considered to be one of the most important American sculptors of the 20th century. He is best known for his colorful, whimsical abstract public sculptures and his innovative mobiles, kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents, which embraced chance in their aesthetic. Born into a family of accomplished artists, Calder's work first gained attention in Paris in the 1930s and was soon championed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, resulting in a retrospective exhibition in 1943. Major retrospectives were also held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1964) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1974). Calder’s work is in many permanent collections, most notably in the Whitney Museum of American Art, but also the Guggenheim Museum; the Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Centre Georges Pompidou. He produced many large public works, including .125 (at JFK Airport, 1957), Pittsburgh (Carnegie International prize winner 1958, Pittsburgh International Airport) Spirale (UNESCO in Paris, 1958), Flamingo and Universe (both in Chicago, 1974), and Mountains and Clouds (Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 1976). Although primarily known for his sculpture, Calder was a prodigious artist with a restless creative spirit, whose diverse practice included painting and printmaking, miniatures (such as his famous Cirque Calder), children’s book illustrations, theater set design, jewelry design, tapestry and rug works, and political posters. Calder was honored by the US Postal Service with a set of five 32-cent stamps in 1998, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously in 1977, after refusing to receive it from Gerald Ford one year earlier in protest of the Vietnam War. Calder moved to New York and enrolled at the Art Students League, studying briefly with Thomas Hart Benton, George Luks, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and John Sloan. While a student, he worked for the National Police Gazette where, in 1925, one of his assignments was sketching the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Calder became fascinated with the action of the circus, a theme that would reappear in his later work. In 1926, Calder moved to Paris, enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and established a studio at 22 rue Daguerre in the Montparnasse Quarter. In June 1929, while traveling by boat from Paris to New York, Calder met his future wife, Louisa James (1905-1996), grandniece of author Henry James and philosopher William James. They married in 1931. While in Paris, Calder met and became friends with a number of avant-garde artists, including Fernand Léger, Jean Arp, and Marcel Duchamp. Cirque Calder (on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art at present) became popular with the Parisian avant-garde. He also invented wire sculpture, or "drawing in space," and in 1929 he had his first solo show of these sculptures in Paris at Galerie Billiet. Hi! (Two Acrobats) in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art is an early example of the artist's wire sculpture. The painter Jules Pascin, a friend of Calder's from the cafes of Montparnasse, wrote the preface to the catalog. A visit to Piet Mondrian's studio in 1930, where he was impressed by the environment-as-installation, "shocked" him into fully embracing abstract art, toward which he had already been tending. Dating from 1931, Calder’s sculptures of discrete movable parts powered by motors were christened “mobiles” by Marcel Duchamp, a French pun meaning both "motion" and "motive." At the same time, Calder was also experimenting with self-supporting, static, abstract sculptures, dubbed "stabiles" by Jean Arp in 1932 to differentiate them from mobiles. Public commissions increasingly came his way in the 1960s. Notable examples are .125 for JFK Airport in 1957, Spirale for UNESCO in Paris 1958 and Trois disques, commissioned for Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Calder's largest sculpture at 25.7 meters high was El Sol Rojo, constructed outside the Aztec Stadium for the 1968 Summer Olympics "Cultural Olympiad" events in Mexico City. Many of his public works were commissioned by renowned architects; I.M. Pei commissioned his La Grande Voile (1966), a 25-ton, 40-foot high stabile for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Part of Calder's repertoire includes pivotal stage sets for more than a dozen theatrical productions, including Nucléa, Horizon, and most notably, Martha Graham’s Panorama (1935), a production of the Erik Satie symphonic drama Socrate (1936), and later, Works in Progress (1968). In addition to sculptures, Calder painted throughout his career, beginning in the early 1920s. He picked up his study of printmaking in 1925, and continued to produce illustrations for books and journals.As Calder’s professional reputation expanded in the late 1940s and 1950s, so did his production of prints. Masses of lithographs based on his gouache paintings hit the market, and deluxe editions of plays, poems, and short stories illustrated with fine art prints by Calder became available for sale. One of Calder's most celebrated and unconventional undertakings was a commission from Dallas-based Braniff International Airways to paint a full-size Douglas DC-8-62 four-engined jet as a "flying canvas." Calder created over 2,000 pieces of jewelry over the course of his career, many of them as gifts for friends and relatives. For his lifelong friend Joan Miró, he set a shard of a broken porcelain vessel in a brass ring. Peggy Guggenheim received enormous silver mobile earrings and later commissioned a hammered silver headboard...

Lithograph on papier bouffant des Papeteries de Casteljoux paper. Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Paper Size: 12.99 x 9.84 inches. Catalogue raisonné reference: Orozco, Miguel. T...

"NEW INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORDER" is a brightly colored serigraph by the American artist/sculptor Chaim Gross printed in 16 colors including shades of yellow, blue, purple, salmon p...

French chromolithograph, published in 1931. Signed by artist in the plate. Printed title lower right of sheet. Plate number top right. From a French series of illustrations of sporti...

PERCY AT THE FRIDGE is a hand drawn, pencil signed limited edition lithograph by the well known and loved British artist and humorist, Beryl Cook. Printed on archival Arches paper, 100% acid free, print size 28" x 21", image size 21 3/8" x 17". In this amusing depiction, "Percy" refers to the aristocratic black cat who sits patiently waiting in front of the open refrigerator stocked with fine champagne, canned salmon, milk, cream, roast turkey, and other gourmet delicacies all tempting items from his genteel mistress's offerings. She stands holding her spectacles, dressed in a jeweled tiara, long white evening gloves and light blue evening gown...

Friends Yannis Amoryanos Greek Date: 1980 Screenprint, signed and numbered in pencil Edition of 300, AP 45 Size: 25.5 in. x 22 in. (64.77 cm x 55.88 cm)

'Canard Siffleur' (Eurasian Wigeon) French chromolithograph, published in 1931. Printed title lower right of sheet. Plate number top right. From a French series of illustrations of...

French chromolithograph, published in 1931. Signed by artist in the plate. Printed title lower right of sheet. Plate number top right. From a French series of illustrations of sporti...

Keith Haring Galerie Paul Maenz, Cologne, Germany 1984: Super rare, tri-fold poster booklet published to announce Haring’s 1984 solo exhibition at...

This Blue Dog work consists of a blue dog on a background of mountains, trees, and a red and yellow sky. There is an alligator at the feet of the dog. There is also an Absolut Vodk...

Artist: Ben Shahn, American (1898 - 1969) Title: One Must Know the Animals from the Rilke Portfolio Year: 1968 Medium: Lithograph, signed in the plate Edition: 750 Size: 22.5 x 17.7...

The Sparrow Hawk is an aquatint and drypoint print on chine from one of the deluxe copies of Picasso's 1942 Histoire Naturelle - Textes de Buffon series. The image size is 10.5 x 8 inches, unsigned as issued, and framed in a contemporary silver and gray moulding. One of about 36 prints that exist with Picasso's remarqued title in French, from the edition of 262 (there were 226 portfolios, some with additional sets on varying papers). Catalogue - Cramer #37 The exceptional etchings from Picasso’s Histoire Naturelle – Textes de Buffon are a masterful combination of sugar-lift aquatint and drypoint, showcasing a full range of gray tonalities. The etchings of animals, birds and insects are considered some of the most beautiful and most unusual examples of Picasso’s graphic work. Roger Lacourière, Picasso’s master printer, pulled the prints for each etching between 1939-1942. It was Lacourière who taught Picasso the sugar-lift aquatint technique which allowed him to mimic the effect of brushstrokes in these etched images. Picasso first explored the technique in his plates for the Vollard Suite, but it was in the creation of the Buffon images that he fully realized its stunning, painterly potential. For the edition, 226 portfolios were produced with the first thirty-six counting as deluxe compilations. These rare deluxe sets were on diverse papers (chine, japon or vergé ancien) and each included a complete additional suite showing Picasso’s title remarques along the bottom. As such, the remarqued versions of the prints are quite rare with just thirty-six of each produced for the edition (with the exception of The Wolf which is never remarqued – the image always fills the entire etching plate). These prints are based on the writings of French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, who extensively documented the natural world in his monumental work Histoire Naturelle. Picasso’s association with the project to illustrate parts of the Buffon came during a tumultuous time in European history – the prelude to, and early years of, World War II. As the continent was ravaged, Picasso lived through the disaster in Paris, which the Germans occupied in 1940. These prints could be seen as a political statement – Picasso channeling his artistic expression into a form of resistance art...

(after) Alexander Calder "Calder's Circus" offset lithograph on wove paper after drawings by the artist Published by Art in America and Perls gallery in 1964 (from drawings done in the 1930's) these range slightly in size but they are all about 13 X 17 inches (with minor variations in size as issued.) These have never been framed. The outer folio is not included just the one lithograph. James Sweeny from the introduction “The fame of Calder’s circus spread quickly between the years 1927 and 1930. All the Paris art world came to know it. It brought him his first great personal success. But what was more important, the circus also provided the first steps in Calder’s development as an original sculptor” Clive Gray wrote ”A visit to the studio of Alexander Calder led to the chance discovery of some hundred masterful circus drawings completed over thirty years ago. We publish, for the first time, a choice of sixteen from that group.” With signed introduction by Miro. These whimsical drawings, done in the style of wire sculpture, include acrobats, clowns, jugglers, trapeeze artists, an elephant, dog and lion. they are great. Alexander Calder is widely considered to be one of the most important American sculptors of the 20th century. He is best known for his colorful, whimsical abstract public sculptures and his innovative mobiles, kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents, which embraced chance in their aesthetic. Born into a family of accomplished artists, Calder's work first gained attention in Paris in the 1930s and was soon championed by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, resulting in a retrospective exhibition in 1943. Major retrospectives were also held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1964) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1974). Calder’s work is in many permanent collections, most notably in the Whitney Museum of American Art, but also the Guggenheim Museum; the Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and the Centre Georges Pompidou. He produced many large public works, including .125 (at JFK Airport, 1957), Pittsburgh (Carnegie International prize winner 1958, Pittsburgh International Airport) Spirale (UNESCO in Paris, 1958), Flamingo and Universe (both in Chicago, 1974), and Mountains and Clouds (Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 1976). Although primarily known for his sculpture, Calder was a prodigious artist with a restless creative spirit, whose diverse practice included painting and printmaking, miniatures (such as his famous Cirque Calder), children’s book illustrations, theater set design, jewelry design, tapestry and rug works, and political posters. Calder was honored by the US Postal Service with a set of five 32-cent stamps in 1998, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously in 1977, after refusing to receive it from Gerald Ford one year earlier in protest of the Vietnam War. Calder moved to New York and enrolled at the Art Students League, studying briefly with Thomas Hart Benton, George Luks, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and John Sloan. While a student, he worked for the National Police Gazette where, in 1925, one of his assignments was sketching the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Calder became fascinated with the action of the circus, a theme that would reappear in his later work. In 1926, Calder moved to Paris, enrolled in the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and established a studio at 22 rue Daguerre in the Montparnasse Quarter. In June 1929, while traveling by boat from Paris to New York, Calder met his future wife, Louisa James (1905-1996), grandniece of author Henry James and philosopher William James. They married in 1931. While in Paris, Calder met and became friends with a number of avant-garde artists, including Fernand Léger, Jean Arp, and Marcel Duchamp. Cirque Calder (on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art at present) became popular with the Parisian avant-garde. He also invented wire sculpture, or "drawing in space," and in 1929 he had his first solo show of these sculptures in Paris at Galerie Billiet. Hi! (Two Acrobats) in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art is an early example of the artist's wire sculpture. The painter Jules Pascin, a friend of Calder's from the cafes of Montparnasse, wrote the preface to the catalog. A visit to Piet Mondrian's studio in 1930, where he was impressed by the environment-as-installation, "shocked" him into fully embracing abstract art, toward which he had already been tending. Dating from 1931, Calder’s sculptures of discrete movable parts powered by motors were christened “mobiles” by Marcel Duchamp, a French pun meaning both "motion" and "motive." At the same time, Calder was also experimenting with self-supporting, static, abstract sculptures, dubbed "stabiles" by Jean Arp in 1932 to differentiate them from mobiles. Public commissions increasingly came his way in the 1960s. Notable examples are .125 for JFK Airport in 1957, Spirale for UNESCO in Paris 1958 and Trois disques, commissioned for Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Calder's largest sculpture at 25.7 meters high was El Sol Rojo, constructed outside the Aztec Stadium for the 1968 Summer Olympics "Cultural Olympiad" events in Mexico City. Many of his public works were commissioned by renowned architects; I.M. Pei commissioned his La Grande Voile (1966), a 25-ton, 40-foot high stabile for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Part of Calder's repertoire includes pivotal stage sets for more than a dozen theatrical productions, including Nucléa, Horizon, and most notably, Martha Graham’s Panorama (1935), a production of the Erik Satie symphonic drama Socrate (1936), and later, Works in Progress (1968). In addition to sculptures, Calder painted throughout his career, beginning in the early 1920s. He picked up his study of printmaking in 1925, and continued to produce illustrations for books and journals.As Calder’s professional reputation expanded in the late 1940s and 1950s, so did his production of prints. Masses of lithographs based on his gouache paintings hit the market, and deluxe editions of plays, poems, and short stories illustrated with fine art prints by Calder became available for sale. One of Calder's most celebrated and unconventional undertakings was a commission from Dallas-based Braniff International Airways to paint a full-size Douglas DC-8-62 four-engined jet as a "flying canvas." Calder created over 2,000 pieces of jewelry over the course of his career, many of them as gifts for friends and relatives. For his lifelong friend Joan Miró, he set a shard of a broken porcelain vessel in a brass ring. Peggy Guggenheim received enormous silver mobile earrings and later commissioned a hammered silver headboard...