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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Alexander Calder: Minimal/Maximal

Aug 15, 2021 – Feb 13, 2022
Potsdamer Straße 50, 10785 Berlin, Germany

“The underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the Universe,” said the artist Alexander Calder, “or part thereof.” Before his death in 1976, Calder evoked space and physics in his mobile sculptures, where suspension and kinetics tell of invisible forces. Whether the work was miniature or monumental, Calder’s understanding of form held fast. His take on spatiality is the focus of this exhibition, which includes Têtes et Queue (1965), a sculpture that was first installed on the museum terrace decades ago, an organic response to the severe geometry of Mies van der Rohe’s museum design. —E.C.

Alexander Calder, “Têtes et Queue”, 1965 © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie / Reinhard Friedrich.