Peter Bellew, Paris (acquired directly from the artist circa 1973)
Private Collection, Paris (acquired by descent from the above)
Sotheby's, New York, November 14, 2000, Lot 30
Pace Wildenstein Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above

New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Calder Constellationes, May - June 1943
Paris, Galerie Louis Carré, Alexander Calder. Mobiles, Stabiles, Constellations, October - November 1946
Bern, Kunsthalle, Calder, Léger, Bodmer, Leuppi, May 1947, cat. no. 50
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Alexander Calder/Fernand Léger, July - August 1947, cat. no. 50
Saint-Paul de Vence, Fondation Maeght, Calder, April - May 1969, cat. no. 59, p. 203, illustrated in color (installation photograph)
Humlebaek, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Calder, June - September 1969, cat. no. 55
Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Calder, November 1969, cat. no. 39, illustrated
Turin, Palazzo a Vella, Calder Mostra Retrospettiva, July - September 1983, cat. no. 163, p. 100, illustrated in color
Bonn, Kunst und Austellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Alexander Calder: Die Grossen Skulpturen, April - September 1993, p. 82, illustrated
Humlebaek, Louisiana Museum of Art; Stockholm, Moderna Museet; Paris, Musée d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Alexander Calder, October 1995 - January 1996, cat. no. 47, p. 90, illustrated in color
Barcelona, Fundació Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, November 1997 - February 1998, cat. no. 623, p. 90, illustrated in color
New York, Pace Wildenstein, Calder in Miniature, February 2003, cat. no. 8, p. 13, illustrated in color
Zurich, Galerie Gmurzynska, Alexander Calder "The Modernist," November 2005 - February 2006, p. 25, illustrated in color (installation view) and p. 27, illustrated in color
New York, L & M Arts, Tanguy / Calder: Between Surrealism and Abstraction, April - July 2010, p. 101, illustrated in color

Maeght, ed., L'artiste et L'oeuvre Calder, Paris, 1971, no. 1, p. 109, illustrated in color (photograph) and illustrated on the cover
H. Harvard Arnason/Ugo Mulas, Calder, New York, 1971, p. 42 and 43, illustrated (photographs of Calder and the work in the artist's studio at Saché)
Maurice Bruzeau, Calder à Saché, Paris, 1975, pl. 32, p. 30, illustrated in color
Exh. Cat., Munich, Haus der Kunst (and traveling), Calder, 1975, p.2, illustrated in color (photograph)
Giovanni Carandente, Calder, Milan, 1983, cat. no. 163, p. 100, illustrated in color
Exh. Cat., Dordogne, Le Chateau de Biron, Calder, 1986, p. 14, illustrated in color (photograph)
Maeght, ed., Calder, Barcelona, 1989, p. 9, illustrated in color
Maeght, ed., Calder, 1992, p. 34, illustrated (photograph)

This sculpture is in very good condition. Please contact the Contemporary Art department at 212-606-7254 for a condition report prepared by Wilson Conservation.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Alexander Calder's Constellation with Bottles, 1943, was born from a considerable gravitational pull of influences – Abstraction and Surrealism. While a tremendous influence to Alexander Calder during this time was still the Abstraction Creation group, Calder's friendship with the Surrealist artists such as Andre Breton and Yves Tanguey permeated into his evolving aesthetic.  Interestingly, the Abstraction Creation group was a relatively casual consortium of artists that joined together in Paris in 1931 in an effort to challenge the hegemonic creative dominance of Surrealism.  "How does art come into being?" Calder asked in one of his Abstraction Creation manifestos. He answered himself—and his audience— poetically and thoroughly: "Out of volumes, motion, spaces carved out within the surrounding space, the universe.  Out of different masses, tight, heavy, middling, achieved by variations of size or color.  Out of directional lines--vectors representing motion, velocity, acceleration, energy, etc.--lines which form significant angles and directions, making up one or several totalities.  Spaces or volumes, created by the slightest opposition to their masses, or penetrated by vectors, traversed by momentum.  None of this is fixed.  Each element can move, shift, or sway back and forth in a changing relation to each of the other elements in the universe.  Thus they reveal not only isolated moments, but a physical law or variation among the elements of life.  Not extractions, but abstractions.  Abstractions which resemble no living things except by their manner of reacting." (Carmen Gimenez, A. S. C. Rower, Serraller F. Calvo eds., Calder: Gravity and Grace. London: Phaidon, 2003, p. 47).

Close friends of Yves Tanguy, Calder's sculptures are often compared to the artist's paintings, both in the style of the biomorphic, organic forms and the use of a strong primary color palette. Calder's sculptures often appear almost as three-dimensional renderings of Tanguy's paintings. Unlike Tanguy, however, Calder was not so intent on always preserving the figurative value of his source image. Rather, he saw value in purely abstract shapes, though still often choosing to represent animals and more literal figures from the natural world. In the present Constellation with Bottles, the five irregular discrete ꦰshapes make use of a tremendous spatial economy, composing a self-contained universe of elegant geometric simplicity but also improvisational-looking playfulness. They pool into amoeba-like puddles, but unlike thin ink or slowly-morphing mercury, which the shapes seem to mirror, their surfaces are not particularly glossy or even uniformly textured. The yellow oar-like form, beaded with a single blue knob and topped off with a spherical, red ball is the sole use of Calder's typical deployment of primary color. The shape on the far right—small and black—narrows in the center making it appear like a cast aside bowtie or maybe even a dumbbell. The wires that connect the four satellite shapes to the larger, central form are the work's only linear lines, and though not imperceptible or delicately dangling, as in Calder's mobiles, these vectors are a crucial formal presence in the total work, adding a j𓆏uxtaposing angularity to an otherwise completely organically-shaped work of repeating curves and subtle indentations.

The particular choice of media in the present work— painted wood and ebony, but also wire rods—is quite extraordinary, as metal was in shortage during the war. Though static, Constellation with Bottles still retains traces of Calder's revolutionary translation of the modernist canon of abstract composition into three-dimensional, literally dynamic space. The present work is not a mobile, but it still appears—as its title suggests—to orbit. Though fixed and of a more familiar tradition of wall-mounted art, Constellation with Bottles is not only graceful and visually poetic but also surprisingly animate-looking, con⭕sidering it doesn't actually move or even include any figurative forms. The mimetic shadows necessarily cast by the sculpture add what amounts to a secondary and ever-slightly-changing composition.