Calder — Rêver en équilibre — Louis Vuitton — Exhibition — Slash Paris

In about 2 months: April 15 → August 16, 2026

Fifty years after his death, the Fondation Louis Vuitton presents the exhibition Calder. Dreaming in Balance, one of the most important shows ever devoted to Alexander Calder.

Organized in collaboration with the Calder Foundation, the exhibition brings together nearly 300 works: mobiles and stabiles — terms coined by Marcel Duchamp and Jean Arp — as well as wire sculptures, paintings, drawings, and jewelry. Within the architecture of Frank Gehry, the mobiles unfold in a true choreography, occupying for the first time all of the Foundation’s galleries as well as the adjoining lawn.

Alexander Calder, La Grande vitesse (1:5 intermediate maquette), 1969 — Feuille de métal, tige, fil de fer, bois et peinture, 259,1 x 342,9 x 236,2 cm Calder Foundation, New York © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photo courtesy of Calder Foundation, New York / Art Resource, New York

The exhibition traces half a century of creation. Settling in Paris in 1926, Calder gained recognition with his wire sculptures and his miniature Cirque, admired by figures such as Joan Miró and Piet Mondrian. A visit to Mondrian’s studio in 1930 marked his turn toward abstraction and the invention of the mobiles, works animated by air currents, which Jean-Paul Sartre would describe as borrowing “their life from the vague life of the atmosphere.”

Between Europe and the United States, Calder developed, until 1976, a body of work that profoundly renewed sculpture by integrating movement and time, from delicate assemblages to monumental public works of the 1960s and 1970s. The exhibition also places his work in dialogue with artists such as Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee, and through photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Man Ray, revealing an artist in constant balance between art and life.