Large Black Face With Sun, 1968

"Large Black Face with Sun" is a gouache and ink on paper painting created by Alexander Calder in 1968. The artwork is signed and dated 'Calder 68' lower right. The image size is 29.25 x 43" and the artwork is framed in a contemporary white frame. The artwork ships framed.

This work is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation, New York.

Alexander Calder’s "Large Black Face with Sun, 1968" stands as a striking testament to the artist’s ability to merge monumental sculptural ideas with the immediacy and intimacy of works on paper. Executed in gouache and ink on a large sheet (29.25 x 43 inches), this composition distills Calder’s lifelong preoccupation with elemental form, abstraction, and the animating spirit of the cosmos. Created just one year after the completion of "El Sol Rojo" (The Red Sun), Calder’s monumental steel sculpture for the Mexican Olympic Games, "Large Black Face with Sun" powerfully translates that ambitious vision into a two-dimensional format that retains all the presence and symbolic charge of his public commissions.

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) was a visionary of modern abstraction and revolutionized sculpture with the invention of the mobile - infusing modern art with real movement for the first time. Yet beyond his kinetic works, Calder’s practice encompassed vast, brightly painted stabiles, jewelry, stage sets, gouaches, and graphics. His works on paper are not mere studies or diversions—they are integral to Calder’s language, offering distilled glimpses of his ideas about motion, balance, and the power of archetypal imagery. By the late 1960s, Calder had achieved global acclaim, with major retrospectives and public commissions on nearly every continent. His gouaches from this period often served as conceptual laboratories, allowing him to explore the monumental themes he would translate into steel and aluminum.

This exceptional gouache is defined by its simplicity and graphic authority. The central form, a large, black, mask-like face occupies most of the mid- to right side of the sheet. The head radiates bold, waving black rays—forms that recall the arching, curved legs of "El Sol Rojo." The features — eyes, nose, mouth — are reserved as white negative space, intensifying the image’s sculptural clarity. A perfect, saturated red circle hovers to the left, reading as both a celestial body and a counterbalance to the dark face. This abstracted sun directly references the blazing red disc of "El Sol Rojo" and evokes the primal duality of light and shadow. The sheet remains white, allowing the elemental forms to float in space with commanding presence. The composition radiates a sense of mythic character—half mask, half cosmic symbol—rendered with Calder’s unmistakable economy of means.

"Large Black Face with Sun" can be seen as both a formal and conceptual echo of "El Sol Rojo." Commissioned for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, "El Sol Rojo" is a 25-meter-high red disc held by black steel supports—an homage to the sun as universal symbol and to pre-Columbian artistic traditions. In "Large Black Face with Sun," Calder brings that same vocabulary onto paper. Waving black rays anthropomorphize the face, giving it a sense of motion and personality. The red disc becomes an abstracted sun—an emblem of power and cosmic energy. The juxtaposition of black and red against a white field emphasizes Calder’s intuitive grasp of visual contrast and spatial harmony. Together, these elements evoke a timeless, mythological presence — a fusion of the human and the celestial, which echoes the ancient Aztec calendar stone.

This painting’s connection to "El Sol Rojo" offers a rare bridge between studio and public art. It has a rich exhibition history in prominent galleries and institutions, affirming its critical importance. The elemental forms and universal symbols in "Large Black Face with Sun" transcend style or era, making it equally relevant to mid-century collectors and contemporary audiences alike.

"Large Black Face with Sun, 1968" is more than a gouache: it is a distilled statement of Calder’s monumental vision. In its stark contrasts and radiating forms, it unites the cosmic with the human, the playful with the monumental. Here, the language of modern sculpture merges with the immediacy of paper to create an image that feels at once ancient and forever new.