Fondation Louis Vuitton has announced a solo exhibition dedicated to Alexander Calder, titled “Calder. Rêver en Équilibre,” which will run from April 15 through August 16, 2026. The show will bring together 300 of the artist’s works spanning from the 1920s to the 1970s.
Calder was an American sculptor credited with inventing the mobile, a revolutionary form of kinetic sculpture that brought movement into modern art. His work bridged engineering and play through these abstract sculptures. “Calder’s innovative approach expanded the dimensions of sculpture to include time as an essential fourth dimension,” Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer, guest curators of the exhibition, said in a joint statement.
“Calder. Rêver en Équilibre” celebrates the 100th anniversary of Calder’s arrival in France and marks 50 years since his death in 1976. The show will feature mobile and stable works (as the artist referred to his kinetic and static artworks, respectively), including wire portraits, paintings, drawings, and wooden sculptures. The show will also feature works by contemporaries and friends of the artist, including Jean Arp, Barbara Hepworth, Jean Hélion, Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, and Pablo Picasso.
Among the highlights of the show will be the Cirque Calder (1931), the artist’s recreation of a circus complete with miniature animals and characters. The sculpture will be loaned to Fondation Louis Vuitton by the Whitney Museum of American Art, returning to the city where Calder originally completed the work. Elsewhere, the exhibition will spotlight several works from the artist’s “Constellation” series, some of the artist’s three-dimensional hanging mobiles.
The artworks in the show will be accompanied by 34 archival photographs taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson, André Kertész, Gordon Parks, Man Ray, Irving Penn, and Agnès Varda to offer more insight into Calder’s personal life.
The exhibition follows a period of renewed attention to Calder’s work. On September 21st, the Calder Gardens in Philadelphia opened. Shortly after, the Whitney welcomed people to “High Wire: Calder’s Circus at 100” in October, celebrating the artist’s Cirque Calder.
