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Alexander Calder Quotes

Just as one can compose colors, or forms, so one can compose motions.

Eric Zafran, Alexander Calder, Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Cynthia E. Roman, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (2000). “Calder in Connecticut”, Rizzoli Intl Pubns

The universe is real, but you can't see it. You have to imagine it.

Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, Ill.), Alexander Calder (1974). “Alexander Calder: a retrospective exhibition. Work from 1925 to 1974”

When an artist explains what he is doing, he usually has to do one of two things: either scrap what he has explained, or make his work fit in with the explanation.

Alexander Calder, A. S. C. Rower, Ugo Mulas, Pier Giovanni Castagnoli, Palazzo delle esposizioni (Rome, Italy) (2009). “Calder: Sculptor of Air”, 24 Ore Cultura

You see nature and then you try to emulate it.

"The Artist's Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists, Harper & Row, New York and Evanston, Illinois". Interview with Katherine Kuh, 1962.

That others grasp what I have in mind seems unessential, at least as long as they have something else in theirs.

Alexander Calder, A. S. C. Rower, Ugo Mulas, Pier Giovanni Castagnoli, Palazzo delle esposizioni (Rome, Italy) (2009). “Calder: Sculptor of Air”, 24 Ore Cultura

The underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the Universe, or part thereof. For that is a rather large model to work from.

Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, Ill.), Alexander Calder (1974). “Alexander Calder: a retrospective exhibition. Work from 1925 to 1974”