Pyramids 1975

Alexander Calder made ‘Pyramids’ using gouache and ink sometime around 1976. The painting is awash with colour: a bright yellow plane sits under a horizon of thin, horizontal black ink strokes and dark semi-circles. Looking at this makes me think about the artist, holding the brush, trying to wrangle colour into something new. The triangles, filled with colour, form a series of pyramids. Some are black and white, others are red and white, one is even blue and red! The paint is applied smoothly, almost like blocks of colour sitting next to each other. The joy of painting for me is in the physical act, the colour and the brushstroke, the layering and the movement, all coming together to form something new. Calder must have felt that too. He’s asking us to consider how these forms relate to one another, how the sky meets the earth, and how shapes in space construct new worlds. He’s in dialogue with the history of painting and abstraction, and is bringing his own perspective to it all.