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Alexander Calder

ALEXANDER CALDER

Calder: Francois Premier Hauser & Wirth 19 October–19 December 2026 Paris
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Press Release

In 1953, Calder returned to live in France for the first time in 20 years, settling in the countryside outside Aix-en-Provence and then in the small town of Saché in the Loire Valley. The artist’s productivity flourished in the expansive Provençal landscape and the modest, solitary spaces of a 17th-century stone house called François Premier in Saché. In Paris the following year, Galerie des Cahiers d’Art exhibited Calder’s ink and gouache paintings from Aix and Galerie Maeght presented ‘Aix. Saché. Roxbury. 1953–54’—a pair of shows that together marked Calder’s triumphant return to France.

Over 70 years later, inspired by a curious fortuity, the beautiful galleries of Hauser & Wirth Paris—located within an hôtel particulier on a street that also bears the name François Premier—‘Calder: François Premier’ will be the first major project dedicated to this expansive postwar period in the life and career of one of the greatest artists of the 20th Century.

‘Calder: François Premier’ will introduce new generations of viewers to two extraordinary, multi-dimensional works: ‘Les Granettes’ (1953), a large-scale standing mobile exhibited for the first time in 72 years, and ‘The Putney Mobile’ (1954), making its public European debut here seven decades after its creation. These sculptural masterpieces will be complemented by an important body of ink and gouache paintings and other works executed by Calder between these seminal years of 1953 and 1954.

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About the Artist

Alexander Calder was born in 1898, the second child of artist parents—his father was a sculptor and his mother a painter. In his mid-twenties, Calder moved to New York City, where he studied at the Art Students League and worked at the National Police Gazette, illustrating sporting events and the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Shortly after his move to Paris in 1926, Calder created his ‘Cirque Calder’ (1926–31), a complex and unique body of art. It wasn’t long before his performances of the ‘Cirque’ captured the attention of the Parisian avant-garde.

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Also Exhibiting

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Alexander Calder, Georgia O’Keeffe
ALEXANDER CALDER, GEORGIA O’KEEFFE Calder | O’Keeffe Hauser & Wirth 3 October 2026–24 January 2027 Hong Kong
Address
26 bis rue François 1er
Paris
France
(1)
Paris 26 bis rue François 1er
Hauser Wirth contemporary art gallery in Paris France
Hauser & Wirth
26 bis rue François 1er, Paris, France
+33157951960
http://www.hauserwirth.com
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