SOM & Alexander Calder

In the 1950s, 60s and 70s, SOM maintained close and dynamic relationships with many of the greatest modernist artists of the era. One sculptor whose work was particularly well-suited to the firm’s steel and glass buildings was Alexander Calder, warmly known to the architects who worked with him as “Sandy.”

From 1948 to 1975, Calder completed artworks for ten of the firm’s projects. When he was fifty years old, his first SOM commission was installed in Cincinnati’s Terrace Plaza Hotel. Twenty Leaves and an Apple, a black and red sculpture designed from sheet metal and piano wire, is an emblematic example of the hanging mobiles that characterized his earlier works. Over the following decades, Calder designed mobiles to reside in the lobbies of SOM’s Chase Manhattan Bank, John F. Kennedy International Arrivals Terminal, and Fourth Financial Center, among other buildings.

In the 1950s and 60s, Calder’s focus shifted to monumental civic sculpture. La Grande Vitesse, installed in the plaza of the SOM-designed Grand Rapids’ Vandenberg Center in 1969, was the first public sculpture funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. SOM manager William Hartmann recalls that the city “wanted his work in a most affectionate manner...It was a very pleasant experience for everybody. The result, I think, is one of the best Calders anywhere. And I think it is so regarded.” ¹

(1) Betty J. Blum, “Oral History of William Hartmann,” Chicago Architects Oral History Project, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1991.