Alexander Calder

“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. For that is a rather large model to work from.”

“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.”

“I paint with shapes.”

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

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

“My fan mail is enormous. Everyone is under six.”