Spiral Composition 1970

Alexander Calder made this gouache painting, with its swirling design and playful shapes, on paper. I can almost imagine Calder in the act of painting. I bet he moved around the paper a lot. The bright primary colours are applied loosely in blocks and lines. Look at the spiral at the centre of the composition: it's like a portal, sucking you into the picture. And then the yellow form? It is kind of banana-shaped but, with those black marks, it also looks like it could be an eel, wriggling through the blue. Calder was also famous for his mobiles, and you can see that love of movement and lightness here in this work on paper. Perhaps other artists like Joan Miró also inspired him. The push and pull between colour and form, abstraction and figuration, creates such a dynamic composition. I think painting allows artists to have these amazing visual conversations with one another across time.