Untitled - Death, Santa, Family (from the portfolio "Santa Claus - A Morality", nine etchings to accompany e.e. cummings' play)

Alexander Calder

The sixth of nine plates from the suite of etchings created to accompany the text (English and French), from e.e. cummings' most successful one-act play, "Santa Claus" (1946).

“The play is an allegory in which Death and Santa Claus exchange masks, but a child sees through the masks to the true identity of each. Death is equated with Science, which ‘can sell people anything -- except understanding.’ In the end, Santa Claus, who is a young man beneath his mask, reveals himself to the child and her mother” (from: Spring, A Journal of the e.e. cummings Society).

Calder's etching technique is unusual, a lightly etched line with hundreds of small "crow's feet " which create a softness and mystery. His linear, two-dimensional figures are reminiscent of the early wire sculptures he created for his "Circus", thirty years earlier.