One of the most acclaimed and influential sculptors of the 20th century, Alexander Calder (1898-1976) grew up amongst a family of classically trained painters and sculptors thus making it natural for him to pursue his interest in art. During his high school years, Calder’s family frequently moved back and forth between California and New York, which fostered the diverse influences on his art. Although Alexander Calder attended the Stevens Institute of Technology where he received a degree in Engineering, he eventually decided to pursue his original love for art and moved to New York City where he enrolled in the Art Students League. Developing a new method of sculpting, Calder began bending and twisting wire, essentially "drawing" three-dimensional figures in space. Calder is renowned for the invention of the mobile, whose suspended, abstract elements move and balance in changing harmony. In 1969, Calder’s monumental public artwork, La Grande Vitesse, located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was the first public work of art in the United States to be funded by the government under the National Endowment for the Arts Art in Public Places program.
