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Joan Miró Foundation

Font de Mercuri, Alexander Calder, 1937

Font de Mercuri, Alexander Calder, 1937, painted iron and aluminium and mercury, 114 × 293 × 196 cm, Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona.

Font de Mercuri, Alexander Calder, 1937, painted iron and aluminium and mercury, 114 × 293 × 196 cm, Joan Miró Foundation, Barcelona.

The American artist Alexander Calder participated in the Spanish pavilion of the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris with Font de mercuri. The same hall also featured Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, Julio Gonzalez’s Montserrat and Joan Miró’s El segador, a work that disappeared when the exhibition closed.

Calder shows a great interest in incorporating movement in sculpture, making him a forerunner of kinetic art.

In this work, mercury acts as an agent activating movement and pays homage to the inhabitants of Almaden, which was hard hit during the Civil War in Spain.

Calder gave the work to the Foundation in 1975, motivated by the close friendship that bound him with Miró.

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