While most of Calder’s outdoor sculptures are stabiles, the artist also made standing mobiles such as Five Empties, captured here in gentle motion. The siting of these sculptures requires a particular delicacy, as heavy winds can cause them damage. At over twenty-three feet high and completed just three years before the artist's death in 1976, Five Empties is an example par excellence of the monumental sculpture that dominated the artist’s late career. For more information: https://tinyurl.com/2v23459f [Video: Five Empties (1973), 2025. Video by Kaitlyn Kramer. © 2025 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York] (fb)

Calder meaningfully experimented with bronze twice in his career, first in 1930 and again in 1944, both times extending beyond commonly held conceptions of the medium. In a letter to his parents on 23 May 1930, the artist wrote, “There is a very fine bronze foundry at the end of Villa Brune—so I am going to delve into cire perdue.” He ended up making thirteen plaster sculptures in his Paris studio and casting eight of them in bronze at the nearby Fonderie Valsuani. For more information: https://tinyurl.com/yy372m29 [Images: Femme sur les mains; Tête par terre; Pieds en l’air; Eléphant; Cheval II (all 1930), all bronze. © 2025 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York] (fb)