Alexander Calder created this lyrical painting of a patchwork landscape stretching out to the horizon watched over by a dark sun was made in 1969 in the same year that...
Alexander Calder created this lyrical painting of a patchwork landscape stretching out to the horizon watched over by a dark sun was made in 1969 in the same year that the magnificent new studio ‘Le Carroi’ was completed in the small village of Saché in the Loire Valley. Establishing himself in this idyllic region of France during the 1950s, Calder quickly became a valued member of the Saché community as he hired local craftsmen and commissioned the nearby Tours factory to help construct his famous mobiles and stabiles.
Calder often dedicated his work to close friends and colleagues that visited him in Saché. In this particular example, ‘Composition’ is inscribed with a message to the celebrated French art historian Jean Leymarie and his wife Marie Paule, who often stayed with Calder in the Loire Valley. In the same year that this work created, Leymarie took up the role as head of the Musée national d'Art modern in Paris, having previously become the youngest curator of a museum in France at the age of 31 for the Grenoble Museum. Leymarie went on to lead the Louvre schools and the French Academy in Rome, but continued to nurture his relationships with radical contemporary artists including Joan Miró and Alexander Calder.