Curated by Dieter Buchhart and Anna Karina Hofbauer, Calder: Dreaming in Balance brings together some 300 works from every phase of the artist’s dizzyingly inventive career. But the show wants to do more than remind us of Calder’s fecundity and innovation. Buchhart and Hofbauer situate the artist within the ferment of Paris between the world wars and the modernism that evolved there. Buchhart notably connects Calder—who studied mechanical engineering in college and worked in the field for a few years before committing himself to art—to the scientific discoveries of the early 20th century, including the advances in physics that would culminate in the detonation of the first atomic bomb. Calder’s work, especially his large mobiles, is so familiar to us today that we need this reminder: His innovations were about incorporating physicists’ radical discoveries about space and time into art.

In Paris, Calder created and performed a circus using wire figures to replicate the various acts. It attracted a number of luminaries, including Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, and Theo van Doesburg. Composer Edgard Varèse frequented Calder’s studio and, in 1930, brought him to visit Mondrian’s own atelier, where Calder discovered abstraction in a thunderclap. In response, Calder went on a bender of abstract painting, which resulted in a gallery show the next year. Léger wrote the introduction to the show’s catalogue, and Pablo Picasso stopped by to introduce himself and get a private tour.

Calder joined a group of abstract artists—including Mondrian, Jean Arp, Robert Delaunay, and Jean Hélion—as he worked out how to incorporate movement into his sculptures by adding cranks and motors. Visiting Calder’s studio while he was working on these ideas, Marcel Duchamp dubbed the sculptures “mobiles.”

Calder: Rêver en Équilibre at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. Photo: David Bordes/Courtesy of Fondation Louis Vuitton

The political situation in Germany in 1933 sent the artist and his wife back to the United States, and they bought a farmhouse in Roxbury, Connecticut, where Calder set up his studio. With encouragement from modernism’s most important artists in Europe, and the support of MoMA, Calder’s career took off early. In 1934, he exhibited his mobiles at Pierre Matisse Gallery; by 1936, three of his works had been included in an important show at MoMA; and nine months later, another two were shown at the museum. But it took a decade or more before Calder’s fame extended beyond the confines of avant-garde artists and their collectors. That later success—and the resulting familiarity with his work—has somewhat robbed us of the understanding that Calder was very much a revolutionary figure.