Dear Calder, dear Kelly: the friendship of two great artists a generation apart

They were separated by 25 years: a generation apart, Alexander Calder and Ellsworth Kelly sparked a rich friendship after meeting in Paris in the early 1950s – an important time creatively for both artists. New York gallery Lévy Gorvy is now celebrating the visual and personal connection between the renowned American artists with an exhibition featuring around three dozen paintings and sculptures made over a 50-year period.
Spread across three storeys of the Upper East Side gallery, the show threads together a captivating dialogue of aesthetics and abstraction. Compare Kelly’s Plant II (1949) painting to Calder’s monumental Black Beast (1940) on the ground floor – both works speak to the artists’ individual pursuit of essential form and space, sitting in perfect union next to each other. ‘It seems so obvious when you look around and see the extraordinary connection between the artists, but this is really the first time this has been explored,’ says Jack Shear, director of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation.
For gallerist Dominique Lévy, inspiration sprang from a serendipitous encounter three years ago at a Calder show staged by the Pulitzer Art Foundation in St Louis. A ‘very beautiful’ Kelly painting – part of the institution’s collection – so happened to catch her gaze through one of Calder’s mobiles. ‘It moved me profoundly. And so [the New York] exhibition doesn’t have a pretentious idea of creating an influence, a link or a new revision of art history,’ she explains. The artists met in Paris in 1950 through mutual friends: Calder then 52 with a career-defining MoMA retrospective behind him, and a precocious 27-year-old Kelly who was still a few years away from his first New York solo show at Betty Parsons Gallery. However, it was only after Kelly returned to the US in 1954 that their relationship flourished. Lévy ponders: ‘What was this friendship? And why was it meaningful?’ They eschewed the mentor and disciple dynamic, and never acknowledged having influence on one another (both men generally resisted discussing the impact of other artists on their work, according to Calder biographer Jed Perl). But Calder was known to have helped Kelly professionally, reaching out to influential curators and even going so far as to pay his studio rent for a month – a gesture he never extended to any other artist. Sandy Rower, president of the Calder Foundation (and Calder’s grandson), says, ‘Ellsworth was surprised by it – he didn’t really understand it either. It will always be a mystery.’
Installation view of ‘Calder / Kelly’ at Lévy Gorvy, New York. © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of Calder Foundation, New York. © Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. Courtesy of Ellsworth Kelly Studio
Calder, too, was instrumental in orchestrating Kelly’s inclusion in MoMA’s landmark 1959 survey ‘Sixteen Americans’, where he exhibited alongside Frank Stella and Robert Rauschenberg. Their friendship was underpinned by a steady correspondence, social gatherings at each other’s homes, and gifts of art through the 1950s – some of which are included in the show at Lévy Gorvy. (A small painting dated circa 1944 given to Kelly by Calder offers a rare chance to see a two-dimensional work realised by the sculptor.)
Simon Perchik, Forrest Gander, and Dan Chiasson have contributed poems inspired by the artists that punctuate the show. ‘We particularly went deep in our passion for poetry for this exhibition by commissioning three poets to think and reflect [on it],’ explains Lévy. ‘In an economy of words, they have said the essential.’ Perhaps then, we need look no further than these words from Gander: ‘Look the colours are conversing. About what? Joy, man, joy!’
Installation view of ‘Calder / Kelly’ at Lévy Gorvy, New York. © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of Calder Foundation, New York. © Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. Courtesy of Ellsworth Kelly Studio
Installation view of ‘Calder / Kelly’ at Lévy Gorvy, New York. © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of Calder Foundation, New York. © Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. Courtesy of Ellsworth Kelly Studio
Red Maze III, 1954, by Alexander Calder, sheet metal, wire, and paint. © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of Calder Foundation, New York
Red White, 1962, by Ellsworth Kelly, oil on canvas. © Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. Courtesy San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Installation view of ‘Calder / Kelly’ at Lévy Gorvy, New York. © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of Calder Foundation, New York. © Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. Courtesy of Ellsworth Kelly Studio
Installation view of ‘Calder / Kelly’ at Lévy Gorvy, New York. © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of Calder Foundation, New York. © Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. Courtesy of Ellsworth Kelly Studio
Installation view of ‘Calder / Kelly’ at Lévy Gorvy, New York. © 2018 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of Calder Foundation, New York. © Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. Courtesy of Ellsworth Kelly Studio
INFORMATION
‘Calder / Kelly’ is on view until 9 January 2019. For more information, visit the Lévy Gorvy website
ADDRESS
Lévy Gorvy
909 Madison Avenue at E 73rd Street
New York
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
-
This designer is revitalising the lost folk tradition of Ukraine’s painted cottages
Through gleaming hammered-steel panels, Victoria Yakusha is opening a dialogue about ancestral memory, craft and womanhood
-
Lind Canvas is a new electric surfboard extending surf beyond the wave
Swedish minimalism meets California cool with Lind’s new electric surfboard, promising the feeling of a never-ending wave. Wallpaper* heads to the Swedish archipelago to try it out
-
A guide to modernism’s most influential architects
From Bauhaus and brutalism to California and midcentury, these are the architects who shaped modernist architecture in the 20th century
-
Leila Bartell’s cloudscapes are breezily distorted, a response to an evermore digital world
‘Memory Fields’ is the London-based artist’s solo exhibition at Tristan Hoare Gallery (until 25 July 2025)
-
‘Her pictures looked like pictures everybody knew were the truth’: Diane Arbus at the Armory
Matthieu Humery curates more than 400 of Arbus’ photographs at New York’s Park Avenue Armory – every picture she was known to have printed
-
Marlene Dumas’ charged, exposed and intimate figures gather in Athens
The artist’s work from 1992 until the present day goes on show at Athens’ Museum of Cycladic Art (until 2 November)
-
Mystic, feminine and erotic: the power of Penny Slinger’s bodies as landscape
Artist Penny Slinger continues her exploration of the sacred, surreal feminine in a Santa Monica exhibition, ‘Meeting at the Horizon’
-
What is recycling good for, asks Mika Rottenberg at Hauser & Wirth Menorca
US-based artist Mika Rottenberg rethinks the possibilities of rubbish in a colourful exhibition, spanning films, drawings and eerily anthropomorphic lamps
-
Get lost in Megan Rooney’s abstract, emotional paintings
The artist finds worlds in yellow and blue at Thaddaeus Ropac London
-
Out of office: the Wallpaper* editors’ picks of the week
It was a jam-packed week for the Wallpaper* staff, entailing furniture, tech and music launches and lots of good food – from afternoon tea to omakase
-
Kaari Upson’s unsettling, grotesque and seductive world in Denmark
The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark is staging the first comprehensive survey of late artist Kaari Upson’s work