Wire sculpture

[1] In the 20th century, the works of Alexander Calder, Ruth Asawa, and other modern practitioners developed the medium of wire sculpture as an art form.

In 1926, after a stint spent making toys at the request of a Serbian toy merchant in Paris, Calder began creating his Cirque Calder, a miniature, movable circus that uses movable wire models of various circus performers, like sword eaters and lion tamers.

Calder’s wire sculptures of this period tended to be portraits, caricatures, and stylized representations of people and animals.

[4] Asawa learned to use commonplace materials from Josef Albers, her teacher at Black Mountain College, and began experimenting with wire using a variety of techniques.

[5] In the 1950s, Asawa experimented with crocheted wire sculptures of abstract forms that appear as three dimensional line drawings.