Bidspirit auction | Pair of Alexander Calder Braniff

Pair of Alexander Calder Braniff Airlines Lithographs - Signed and dated in the lower right.  Paper is embossed in the lower right with 'The Fixing Colors Collection 1976.' Date: 1974   Image: 19 1/2” x 25 1/4” Frame: 30” x 36”   Condition: Both prints and frames are in very good condition.    Artist Bio: Alexander Calder (1898–1976) trained as a mechanical engineer before studying at the Art Students League, and a 1930 visit to Mondrian's studio in Paris turned him decisively toward abstraction; Duchamp coined the word mobile for his hanging kinetic sculptures in 1931 and Arp coined stabile the following year. He made lithographs prolifically from the late 1940s until his death, principally through Galerie Maeght and the Arte Adrien Maeght atelier in Paris, and the print imagery is his painted gouache vocabulary translated to stone — spirals, suns, stars, spheres and radiating lines in the primary-color palette he used throughout. In 1973 Braniff International Airways commissioned him to paint a Douglas DC-8 in aerospace paint — the first artist-painted commercial airliner — under the name Flying Colors, and he and his wife flew aboard the inaugural journey. He produced some fifty gouaches for the project along with hand-painted aircraft models, and the designs were issued as lithographs. The project's success led directly to Calder painting the first BMW Art Car in 1975.