Centro Botin is pleased to announce Calder Stories, an unprecedented exhibition spanning five decades of Alexander Calder’s career, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of Serpentine Galleries, London, and organized in collaboration with the Calder Foundation, New York.

The exhibition, comprised of approximately 80 works, largely drawn from the Calder Foundation’s holdings, as well as from major public and private collections, will consider little known stories within Calder’s oeuvre, from the development of major public commissions to groundbreaking performances. The installation will be designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano, architect of Centro Botín itself.

Calder’s collaborations with leading architects, choreographers and composers of his time resulted in some of his most recognised works, and yet their backstories remain largely unexamined. A number of these important projects went unrealised, including collaborations from the 1930 and 1940s with such luminaries as Wallace K. Harrison, Harrison Kerr and Percival Goodman. The exhibition traces Calder’s creative process in the execution of these projects, from his maquettes for sculpture competitions and world’s fairs to his proposals for choreographed objects and performances and including rare sketches and related ephemera.

Among the unrealised projects shown in the exhibition will be a series of six maquettes made by Calder in 1939 to accompany Percival Goodman’s submission for a proposed Smithsonian Gallery of Art in Washington; and a group of nearly two-dozen bronzes from 1944, made at the suggestion of Wallace K. Harrison for an International Style building and envisioned to stand some 10-12 metres tall in cast concrete. Drawings relating to what Calder termed ‘ballet objects’, including set designs for a proposed ballet with music by Harrison Kerr will be presented and digital animations of several compositions have been specially commissioned for the exhibition.