Established Finnish architect Hugo Harmia purchased this ring by Alexander Calder in 1937 from Helsinki's Artek gallery as a gift for his wife, most likely from an exhibition that featured Calder's works alongside those of Fernand Léger. Harmia was a partner of the firm Hugo Harmia and Waldemar Baeckman, whose most well-known work was the Helsinki School of Economics, designed in 1941 and built between 1948 and 1950.
The show in question was organized by Maire Gullichsen, who co-founded Artek with architects and designers Alvar and Aino Aalto along with art historian Nils Gustav-Hahl. Indeed, Gullichsen had a similar piece by Calder, shown in the image above.
The ring is exemplary of Calder's ability to transform ordinary material into functional sculptural works of exceptional beauty. The spiral was a frequent motif for Calder as an embodiment of how a simple line can become a universal symbol of cosmic organization, whether as an abstraction or in the form of the sun, shell, or body part.
Alexander Calder 1898–1976
Born in 1898 to Nanette Lederer Calder and Alexander Stirling Calder, a painter and a sculptor respectively, Alexander Calder was encouraged to be creative and make things by hand. As a child he made gifts for his family and jewelry for his sister’s dolls. In 1915, Calder attended Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey graduating in 1919 with a degree in mechanical engineering because his parents didn’t want him to struggle as an artist. After completing school, Calder work a myriad of jobs including draftsman for Edison Company, a staff member at Lumber magazine, coloring maps for a hydraulics engineer and timekeeper for a logging camp.
In the spring of 1922 Calder attended night classes in drawing and the following year he decides to pursue a career as a painter. By 1925 Calder had his first art exhibition and in 1926 he made his first sculptures out of wood and wire. Calder relocated to Paris, socializing with the Parisian avant-garde, and started making mechanical toys and abstract sculptures. His kinetic works, a departure from traditional sculpture, became known as ‘mobiles’, a term coined by Marcel Duchamp.
Calder’s artistic endeavors ranged from mobiles to stabiles (static sculptures) both small and large, to jewelry and paintings. Today his works can be found in numerous museum collections around the world including The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.
Auction Results Alexander Calder
