For Calder, sculpture is a means of capturing movement, not stillness. The present work celebrates Calder’s enduring interest in movement and performance. As part of a collaboration with the director and choreographer Joseph Lazzini, Calder crafted this mobile for the set of “Eppur si Muove” (“So it Moves”), performed at the Marseille Opera. The maquette was gifted to Lazzini and held in his personal collection until 2002. Calder partnered with other artists such as composer Erik Satie and ballet dancer Martha Graham, entwinning his oeuvre with a broader context of performance arts.

The interplay of color and line in Calder's mobile reveals the subtleties of his artistry. The wire axes, seemingly unassuming, traverse space like lines on a piece of paper, their minimal contours easily translatable into a two-dimensional drawing. However, the lightweight materials defy the instinct to flatten, dancing through the air and affirming the sculpture's tangible existence within three-dimensional space. The bold and striking colors employed reflect the influence of Calder's close friend, Joan Miró, and articulate a concise, evocative vocabulary of color. The maquette inhabits the space between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional, between stillness and motion, between fine art and performance. Calder distills these opposing forces into the delicately balanced mobile, imbued with an energetic quality of its own.