Alexander Calder

The Project

Alongside legendary French art publisher Cahiers d’Art, Dropshop is honored to release the inaugural deluxe edition of the long-awaited Calder Chess Set. This edition, published by Cahiers d’Art in collaboration with the Calder Foundation, faithfully recreates Calder’s most sculptural and iconic chess set — a true collector’s piece for art, design, and chess enthusiasts.

In 1944, Alexander Calder created an original chess set for The Imagery of Chess, a groundbreaking exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. Of the three sets he would design in the 1940s, this was the one Calder kept for play in his home in Roxbury, Connecticut.

Calder's set challenges tradition: the queen is larger than the king, reflecting his belief in matriarchal values and in balanced relationships where women guide men. An oversized knight disrupts the board, inviting deeper attention - both to the game and to life. And rather than black and white, Calder used red and blue, rejecting notions of binary opposition or built-in superiority.

A close friend of Marcel Duchamp, Calder once gifted an earlier version of his chess set to the famed artist and chess enthusiast—who declared, “While all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”

The Chess Set

Each piece in this Calder Chess Set has been faithfully recreated from detailed 3D scans of the original and precisely milled from solid wood, preserving the texture, scale, and spirit of Calder’s handmade work.

This inaugural release of 750 chess sets will additionally be accompanied by a set of two inkjet prints of Calder’s original Chess Knightmares drawings from 1944.

Calder Chess Set
Deluxe Edition of 750
Medium: Painted wood chess set comprised of 32 pieces, board, and yellow tray, additionally accompanied by two archival pigment prints after drawings from Calder's Chess Knightmare series, all contained in a cardboard presentation box
Dimensions:
smallest piece: 2 3/8 in. tall
largest piece: 5 1/4 in. tall
board: 17 3/4 x 18 1/8 x 3/8 in.
presentation box: 20 x 20 x 10 in.
prints: 14 1/8 x 14 1/8 in.

$2,500

“While all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”

— Marcel Duchamp

The Artist

Alexander Calder (b. 1898, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania–d. 1976, New York City), whose illustrious career spanned much of the twentieth century, is the most acclaimed and influential sculptor of our time. Born in a family of celebrated, though more classically trained artists, Calder utilized his innovative genius to profoundly change the course of modern art. He began in the 1920s by developing a new method of sculpting: by bending and twisting wire, he essentially “drew” three-dimensional figures in space. He is renowned for creating the mobile, whose suspended, abstract elements move in changing harmony. From the 1950s onward, Calder increasingly devoted himself to making outdoor sculpture on a grand scale from bolted steel plate. Today, these stately titans grace public plazas in cities throughout the world.

Cahiers d'Art

Founded in 1926 by Christian Zervos at 14, rue du Dragon, in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Cahiers d'Art encompasses a publishing house, a gallery, and a revue.

The Cahiers d'Art revue was entirely unique when it was introduced: a journal of contemporary art defined by its combination of striking typography and layout, abundant photography, and juxtaposition of ancient and modern art.

Between the 1920s and the mid-1970s Cahiers d'Art published ninety-seven issues of the Cahiers d'Art revue and more than fifty books of fine art and architecture as well as the catalogue raisonné of Pablo Picasso in thirty-three volumes.

Since its relaunch in 2012, Cahiers d'Art has presented unique exhibitions and published revues, art books, and limited editions devoted to Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso, Rosemarie Trockel, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Gabriel Orozco, Thomas Schütte, Frank Gehry, Christo, and Arthur Jafa, among many other artists.

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