Dotted Interior 1970

Alexander Calder painted "Dotted Interior" sometime around 1970, and it looks like he used gouache on paper. The way Calder uses color here, it’s all about the process of layering and building up these simple forms. When you look closely, the surfaces aren’t perfectly smooth, you can see where he’s loaded the brush and pushed the paint around. The black background feels almost velvety. Then you get these sharp-edged geometric shapes in red, yellow, and blue, each dotted with circles of contrasting colors. Take that blue form at the bottom—it’s got orange and white dots, like little planets orbiting a primary shape. This is so playful and direct, it kind of reminds me of Miro. Ultimately, "Dotted Interior" feels like a microcosm of Calder’s wider world, a world where color and shape are always in motion, always in conversation.