Alexander Calder was a key figure in the development of abstract sculpture and is renowned for his groundbreaking work in kinetic art; he is one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Prelude to the Man-Eater is a delicately balanced standing sculpture that responds to air currents, creating a constantly changing and dynamic visual experience.

Calder’s standing mobiles were a result of his continuous experimentation with materials, form, and balance. Alfred Barr, the first director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, commissioned Calder to create a new standing mobile in 1945. The present work is a formal study for that commissioned work, Man-Eater With Pennant. Prelude to the Man-Eater, like the sculpture in MoMA, is designed to be viewed from multiple angles, encouraging viewers to walk around and interact with it. In both pieces, the different metal components move around a central post. Maquettes and studies played a vital role in Calder’s practice as it gave him the opportunity to understand scale and balance before scaling up the piece. Often, these maquettes existed in the smaller size for decades before enlarging or simply existed at their size and never made into larger works. In Prelude, we can see Calder thinking more vertically compared to the final piece at MoMA.

Prelude to the Man-Eater is also represented in Calder’s preparatory drawing, Sketches for Mobiles: Prelude to Man-Eater; Starfish; Octopus, which is in the permanent collection of the Harvard Fogg Museum.