Oger – Blanchet
Hotel Drouot, 22 May 2026
Alexander Calder
Stabile-mobile
High : 14 cm ; Large : 16 cm.
Provenance :
- Given by the artist to Madame H. when she went to see him at his home in Saché
- By descent to current owner
Estimate : €80,000/120,000
A Tiny Calder Sculpture With a Long Private History Heads to Auction in Paris
A five-and-a-half-inch Alexander Calder sculpture is set to surface in Paris next month, bringing with it a provenance story that may matter as much as the work itself. Oger-Blanchet will offer Stabile-mobile (1974) on May 22 at Hôtel Drouot, with an estimate of EUR 80,000 to EUR 120,000.
The metallic sculpture has spent roughly 50 years in private hands. According to a representative for the auction house, it was a gift from Calder to Mrs. H. an archivist at the French National Museum of Modern Art, the institution that became the Centre Pompidou in 1977. The auction house described the relationship as one of acquaintance rather than close friendship, but the work’s history still gives it a notable place in Calder’s late output.
Stabile-mobile is a fitting title for a work that bridges the artist’s two most recognizable sculptural languages. Calder’s stabiles are grounded and stationary; his mobiles are suspended and in motion. Here, the two ideas meet in a compact object that can spin when pressure is applied to its horizontal arm, creating a small but precise choreography of movement.
That late-career synthesis is part of what makes the piece interesting, even if it is modest in scale. Calder produced approximately 22,000 works across sculpture, painting, jewelry, and other forms, but his mobiles remain the market’s most prized objects. According to the Artnet Price Database, all 10 of his most expensive works ever sold at auction are mobiles.
The record is led by Poisson volant (Flying Fish) (1957), which sold for $25.9 million at Christie’s New York in 2014. Painted Wood (1943) followed at $20.4 million last November. Four of Calder’s top 10 auction results date to the 1940s, five to the 1950s, and only one to the 1960s.
Against that backdrop, Stabile-mobile arrives as something different: not a record breaker, but a work whose value may rest on the quiet force of its history, its rarity, and its place at the end of Calder’s career.
