Shall I tell you upfront how much this mobile executed circa 1939 by the inevitable Alex Calder (1898-1976) went for in November 2008 at an auction in New York city ? Yes I will : 782,500 dollars, i.e. the upper level of the estimate.Everybody knows that Calder's works do not come up cheap but sometimes it is simply mind-boggling : the very same day an other mobile (picture below) went for $ 602,500 vs. an estimate of around 200,000.
This "Untitled" standing mobile--painted sheet metal and wire measuring 6½ x 10 x 6 in. (16.5 x 25.4 x 15.2 cm.) was executed circa 1954 and was the property of the Estate of Baroness Marcella Korff, niece of the American sculptor Mary Callery born in New York City in 1903 and deceased in 1977.
Callery who lived in Paris for some time inspired many young collectors of her time and was the first owner of Picasso's 1932 masterpiece Le Rêve, which she sold in August 1941 for $7,000 to Victor and Sally Ganz, a young New York couple who were starting to build a collection of their own. In 1997, Christie's sold Le Rêve from The Collection of Victor and Sally Ganz for $ 48,4 million.
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