Alexander CALDER (1898-1976) Untitled, 1965 Ink and gouache on paper, mounted on board Signed and dated lower right: "Calder 65" 74.6 x 107 cm (scattered foxing) Provenance: - Nicholas Guppy Collection (1925-2012), London (acquired directly from the artist) - Sotheby's London, sale of December 7, 1977, lot 253 - Private collection, Belgium . This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation in New York. "[...] The sun is a sphere, but also a source of ardent heat...; a ball... or a disc is hardly interesting, if one does not have the feeling that something emanates from it." Alexander Calder Nicholas Guppy, "Les gouaches de Calder", Derrière le Miroir No. 156, Maeght éditeur, Paris, February 1966, p.12 The 1960s were a very fertile period for Calder. Sculpture, tapestry, lithography and gouache constitute his range of mediums. During this period, Calder transcribed about forty years of sculpture onto paper. The gouaches and sculptures, although in two and three dimensions, are conceived by the artist in the same way in the non-symmetrical balance, the construction in space or the imagination and the colours. Calder's works on paper and sculptures reason in the same way to the viewer, through a similar vocabulary and intention. Calder's classical palette is restricted, here the palette of our gouache is voluntarily reduced to the extreme. Our gouache borrows its minimalist forms from the geometry and traditional motifs of the decorative arts: sun, discs, spheres, moon and pyramids which will be explored especially in the 70's afterwards. It is therefore interesting, even moving, to encounter them in a work from 1965. We are right in the middle of the cosmos theme. The red sun, the main subject of our gouache, is developed in Calder's sculptures and mobiles, but also powerfully on paper. It is not surprising that Calder's collector and friend Nicholas Guppy (1925-2012) acquired this "cosmic work" from the artist. Indeed, as a botanist and explorer, one can assume that these celestial motifs may have required his attention and sensitivity. "Calder's paintings are self-contained, full of boldness and originality. Nowhere else are such resplendent colours, such deep symbolism, such vigorous sketching, such assertive power, so complete in their completion, found together. Very often, a few touches of a primary colour are enough to create these deceptively simple masterpieces: Calder began painting before 1926, and has been using gouache since 1932; it is by knowing all the resources of his tool that he obtains, in long years of inner discovery and purification, the air of spontaneity and simplicity with which he marks his works. With increasing pleasure, one comes to their freshness, their playfulness, their virtuosity, contrasting with the tedious style, the laboriousness, the confusion, - and the banality - of those half-articulated works, with which our exhibitions choke. Clear conception, firm structure, brilliancy of color, infinite invention, make this one of the most remarkable bodies of work any artist of this time has produced." Nicholas Guppy, "Les gouaches de Calder" , Derrière le Miroir n° 156, Maeght éditeur, Paris, February 1966, p.9