Original Calder Poster Fondation Maeght, 1974

This is an original lithographic poster created in 1974 by Alexander Calder for an exhibition at the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence — one of the most celebrated private foundations for modern art in the world, and the institution that had become, over the decades, the natural home for Calder's work in France. The Fondation Maeght, perched above the village in the hills of the Alpes-Maritimes, was itself conceived as a total work of art: designed by Josep Lluís Sert, its gardens populated with sculptures by Miró, Giacometti and Calder himself, it remains to this day one of the most extraordinary intersections of architecture, landscape and art in Europe.

Alexander Calder (1898–1976), born in Philadelphia into a family of sculptors, transformed the history of art with a single invention: the mobile. By introducing movement, chance and air into sculpture, he dissolved the boundary between art and the natural world — his works breathe, shift and respond to their environment in ways that no static object could. His stabiles — the large-scale, ground-based counterparts to the mobiles — populate public spaces across the globe, from the Centre Pompidou in Paris to the Lincoln Center in New York. At 76, in the year this poster was created, Calder was at the final summit of a career that had made him one of the most beloved and recognisable artists of the 20th century.

The poster design itself is quintessential Calder — bold primary colours, biomorphic forms, the graphic confidence of an artist who understood that a flat surface could carry the same joyful energy as a sculpture turning in the wind. It is a poster that functions as a work of art in its own right.

This example is in excellent condition — grade A — and is presented unframed, ready for the wall it deserves.

A joyful and iconic piece — Calder at his most exuberant, for the foundation that understood him best, in the final years of a revolutionary career.