ALEXANDER CALDER
1898-1976

The Red Nose, 1969, was one of only four lithographs chosen by the Whitney Museum of American Art for its 1976 exhibit Calder’s Universe. The catalog for the show was a book written by Jean Lipman and published by Running Press of Philadelphia in cooperation with the Whitney Museum. It opened in New York in October of that year, then traveled to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts.

In her preface to the book Ms. Lipman writes:

This book is intended to be a distillation of Alexander Calder's life and achievement, presenting the outstanding examples of the many kinds of art which he has originated or developed in a personal way. In preparing this critical selection from fifty years of Calder's work, the Whitney Museum's editorial team has spent two years discussing the project with the dealers, museum directors and curators, collectors and critics who have been most directly involved with his career; with members of his family; and, of course, with Sandy Calder himself. The final choice was made much as a museum might have formed an ideal Calder collection, had all his work been available for acquisition. The examples reproduced here were chosen by elimination — a difficult project — after scrutiny of several thousand examples. Quality was the determinant rather than an attempt to cover every variety of work. Even with this puristic approach, no significant category of his oeuvre has been omitted, for such is Calder's virtuosity that he has created outstanding series of works in almost every medium.

 Reprinted with the permission of Running Press and The Whitney Museum of American Art.