Calder’s hanging and standing mobiles invented a new form of making art and of pushing the boundaries of sculpture – and they challenged immobility – a quality intrinsic to the art form. Executed circa 1951, Long Red Wire demonstrates Calder’s knowledge of physics and maths as much as his unique creative vision as an artist. Dependent on a precise distribution of weight, Calder’s mobiles appear effortless,
with a playful balance of the elements. With every action in nature, there is an equal and opposite
reaction. There is surely no greater, more poetic demonstration of these immutable laws than Alexander
Calder's standing mobile sculptures, of which Long Red Wire is a fine example Elegantly poised and masterfully constructed to counterbalance the weight of a single red plate against that of three others.

As with other standing mobiles Long Red Wire moves in response to its surrounding environment, changed by the slightest breeze or touch; a room’s air flow becomes an active participant. Alexander Calder achieved the feat of crafting sculptures that maintain perfect balance, suspended between delicate armatures and simple joints and secured his place at the forefront of Modernism.

Marcel Duchamp famously coined the term ‘mobile’ to describe Calder’s kinetic sculptures, reflecting the artist’s keen awareness of how subtle, sporadic, and unpredictable movements could evoke a profound psychological response in viewers. Calder’s focus on motion was not just an aesthetic choice, but a reflection of his relational approach. By creating sculptures in perpetual motion, he introduced a sense of temporal fluidity and change. His mobiles can never be experienced the same way twice, constantly evolving and embodying the idea that everything in the universe is in flux, transient, and ever-changing.

Discussing his aesthetic rationale with regards to colour, in 1962 Calder explained that colour is really secondary and he wanted 'things to be differentiated. Black and white are first – then red is next – and then I get sort of vague. It's really just for differentiation, but I love red so much that I almost want to
paint everything red. I often wish that I'd been a fauve in 1905' (the artist quoted in K. Kuh, The Artist's Voice: Talks with Seventeen Artists, Illinois 1962, online). Long Red Wire includes the typical black and white elements, wonderfully contrasted against the foundational ‘long red wire’ that connects the entire work. Colour was, for Calder, not a representational concern, but an emotional one.

Calder's choice of bold colours and their juxtaposing reflects a singular and intuitive approach to sculpting. His interest in Abstraction was first piqued when he visited Mondrian’s studio in Paris in 1930, where he was impressed not by the paintings but by the environment. He remarked about the visit, 'I was particularly impressed by some rectangles of colour he had tacked on his wall in a pattern after his nature.

I told him I would like to make it oscillate - he objected' (Calder, “What Abstract Art Means to Me”, The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin 18, no. 3, spring 1951). Mondrian’s abstractions can be seen as closely tied to Calder’s works. The fine lines of wire connecting each coloured element can be compared to the black dividing lines of Mondrian’s paintings. The white voids in the paintings tantamount to the negative space surrounding the elements of Calder’s sculptures. In the exhibition catalogue for Alexander Calder: Gongs and Towers at Curt Valentin Gallery in 1952, the seminal early show in which the present work was shown, James Johnson Sweeney writes of Calder: “In his mobiles he has taken sculpture out of its old field and given it a new dimension. He has kept his respect for the grammar of the old tradition and observes it always. But through his work he has uncovered new dialect and has developed a poetry in it that is fresh, young and his own.” (J. J. Sweeney, “Alexander Calder’s Mobiles,” in Exh. Cat., New York, Curt Valentin Gallery, Alexander Calder: Gongs and Towers, 1952, n.p.). This exhibition also showed many of Calder's most celebrated sculptures, including Tower with Painting in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Bifurcated Tower in Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Curt Valentin (1902-1954), a German-Jewish émigré became a widely respected as one of the most astute dealers in modern art.

Valentin organised influential exhibitions and attracted major artists to his gallery in New York. His enthusiasm for sculpture is revealed by the artists and exhibitions he selected. He also published several distinguished, limited-edition books in which the writings of poets and novelists were illustrated by
contemporary artists.