Important Winter Sale: Alexander Calder, Untitled

Alexander Calder, who also was an engineer, was part of the avant-garde in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, when Surrealism and Dada, as well as abstract art, were in the spotlight. Inspired by Piet Mondrian, he stuck to the primary colours - red, blue and yellow.

One of his most significant works, Circus Calder, which he performed for Parisian friends in a two-hour show, is now on permanent display at the Whitney Gallery in New York, where animals and acrobats in steel wire, metal and fabric take over the ring. It is said that Calder always had some wire in his pocket to sketch new ideas.

The 1940s were a significant period in Alexander Calder's artistic career. In 1943, MoMA staged a retrospective exhibition of his work that was a great success with the public and was to have a decisive influence on Calder's future career. In 1946, Duchamp organised an exhibition of Calder's work at the Galerie Louis Carré in Paris, featuring mainly hanging and standing mobiles. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the foreword to the catalogue.

In the 1950s, Calder went monumental. Such sculptures are now placed outside several of the most important museums. One example is the 13-metre high motorised mobile "The Four Elements" outside the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and "Janey-Waney" in the Danish art museum Louisiana sculpture park. His tallest sculpture, the 20.5-metre "El Sol Rojo", was created for the Summer Olympics in Mexico City.

The untitled work coming up for sale was acquired at the Buchholz Gallery in 1949 at the exhibition "Alexander Calder". During the 1930s, Curt Valentin worked as an art dealer at the Buchholz Gallery in Berlin. In 1937 he emigrated to the United States with a sufficient number of works by German modernists to open a gallery under the same name in New York. Valentin organised many important exhibitions and associated many of the most renowned artists with his gallery. His affection for sculpture was evident in the artists and exhibitions he chose.