attributed to Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976)... Lot 21

attributed to Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976) Critter Shiwa, 1974 Aluminum model cut out by the artist following his red grease pencil drawing; two extensions attached with spring steel staples by the artist. Traces of black marker crossing out the right side and captioned by a Biémont worker: "right arms symmetrical left". Height: 61 cm. Provenance: model offered after 1974 by Alexander Calder to Bernard Hillairet, draughtsman at the Biémont factory in Tours between 1972 and 1988, and which has remained his property since then. This work was not sent to the Calder Foundation in New York, which was therefore unable to make a decision about it. This is why it is presented as "attributed to Calder". It is therefore exceptionally priced at 5,000 euros. Nota Bene: in a letter dated November 14, 2022, the Calder Foundation considers, on the basis of photographs, that "this work is a counterfeit of an existing and documented work by Calder", which is formally contested by its owner. In an effort to appease Mr. Hillairet, he wished to postpone the public sale of this model in order to promote the manifestation of the truth by allowing the Calder Foundation to mention the "existing work" of which this one is a counterfeit. Shiwa, the Hindu goddess of creation of the universe, is here transfigured into "Critter Shiwa" by a facetious Alexander Calder. Dressed in stilettos, in memory of a scene experienced by the three-year-old artist in Philadelphia, our sculpture is the officiant of a dance ritual of the lower classes of Rio, Bahia, Havana or Trinidad, where the Calder family spent a long time with Hector dos Prazeres. It presents two profiles originally thought asymmetrical by the sculptor, when he drew it on an aluminum plate with a grease pencil. He cuts the plate himself and decides to add two extensions, an arm and a foot, fixed by means of two spring steel staples bent with the strength of his wrist. When he presented it to the workers at the Biémont factory in Tours, he asked them to make a large model of it from the left side only, crossing out the right side. This model was offered by the artist to a draftsman of the factory, which has kept it to this day. The Maeght Gallery organized an exhibition in Paris in early 1975 devoted to Calder's Critters, publishing a special issue of Derrière Le Miroir with another Critter Shiwa on the cover, and whose photographs by Clovis Prévost, inside, show Alexandre Calder in his studio in Saché, in the midst of many large Shiwa silhouettes, ready, as the photographer kindly told us, to dance under the Touraine moon.