Black New Moon 1965

Alexander Calder made this gouache, titled Black New Moon, in 1965 using gouache on paper. The marks in this piece feel immediate and intuitive, and the kind of artmaking that’s all about process. Calder plays with the material qualities of gouache, using its opacity to create bold, flat shapes of colour. The orange area on the right feels particularly grounded and solid. In contrast to that, the background feels more fluid, almost like watercolour. Look at that spiralling form, near the bottom left. It's so playful, like a little doodle, that it kind of makes me smile. It’s these gestural moments that give the work its energy and vitality. You can see echoes of artists like Joan Miró in Calder's playful abstraction and interest in biomorphic forms. Like Miró, Calder invites us to engage with art as a space of experimentation and imaginative possibility, embracing ambiguity rather than fixed meaning.