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Montreal to host Canada's first retrospective of artist Calder

Alexander Calder's "Blue Flower, Perforated Red" is displayed at Christie's in New York

More than 150 works by American artist Alexander Calder, including his famous mobiles, will go on display starting Friday at Montreal's Museum of Fine Arts, Canada's first retrospective dedicated to the influential sculptor. New York's Guggenheim and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, museums in two cities the artist called home, contributed works to the exhibit titled "Alexander Calder, Radical Inventor," which is set to run until February 24. The show dedicated to the artist who "made sculpture move" includes some two dozen of the mobiles that launched Calder to fame. Once a day, a museum attendant will set the delicate works, which will be suspended from the ceiling, into motion. A collection of the artist's sculptures, paintings and jewelry will also be on display. Trained as an engineer, Calder used a wide variety of media to make more than 22,000 works before he died in 1976. Montreal is home to Calder's monumental sculpture "Trois disques," known colloquially there as "Man." The massive work of abstract public art insinuating human and technological progress stands 22 meters (72 feet) high and was installed in the city's Parc Jean-Drapeau for the 1967 World's Fair. The monumental work is comprised of overlapping arches of stainless steel -- and as a "stabile," the opposite of a mobile, the sculpture is stationary while creating plays of shadow and light that depict movement.