32 Quotes by Alexander Calder

Just as one can compose colors, or forms, so one can compose motions.

Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an entirely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. It would be perfect but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion.

To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect.

I have been making wire jewelry - and think I'll really do something with it, eventually.

The underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the Universe, or part thereof...What I mean is that the idea of detached bodies floating in space, of different sizes and densities, perhaps of different colors and temperatures, and surrounded and interlarded with wisps of gaseous condition, and some at rest, while others move in peculiar manners, seems to me the ideal source of form.

My fan mail is enormous. Everyone is under six.

The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle. I represent them by disks and then I vary them... spheres of different sizes, densities, colours and volumes, floating in space, traversing clouds, sprays of water, currents of air, viscosities and odours - of the greatest variety and disparity.

The next step in sculpture is motion.

You see nature and then you try to emulate it.