Executed in 1966. This work is registered by the Calder Foundation under application no. A07859.

Red Performer is an example of Alexander Calder’s celebrated standing mobiles, encapsulating the innovative genius of his moving sculptures. The work is given its anchor, its sense of solidity, by the red element that sits steadily on a surface. Propped up on its front legs, a headless animal has its tail elegantly curved and its whole body tilted upwards, culminating in a sharp, angular top. Precariously balanced on top is a long wire with a mobile element hanging on its one end, demonstrating the “performer’s” skill in creating an equilibrium out of a web of moving geometric shapes and provoking a sense of awe and suspense.

In his standing and hanging mobile sculptures, Calder explored the modernist idea of bringing a work of art into the observer’s space and giving it an active role in the viewer’s environment. The movement of a mobile’s parts renders the work dynamic and introduces the element of chance, inspired by the European Surrealists artists with whom Calder came into contact. “Why must art be static?” demanded Alexander Calder […]. “You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an intensely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. It would be perfect, but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion.” [1]

Red Performer was once part of the collection of Henry and Margaret Demant, Michigan-based art collectors, philanthropists and benefactors to the Detroit Institute of Art. Having fled Germany at the beginning of the Second World War, Margaret and her family settled in Detroit in 1940. Margaret was an astute businesswoman and together with her husband Henry she ran a prominent interior design business, Walter Herz Interiors. Their impressive art collection ranged from European paintings and works on paper to African sculptures, many of which were given as a legacy to the Detroit Institute of Art.

[1] Alexander Calder, quoted in ‘Objects to Art Being Static, So He Keeps It in Motion’, in New York World-Telegram (New York, June 11, 1932)