On Monday evening, Hauser & Wirth Paris reopens its gallery with 'Calder: François Premier', the first major exhibition dedicated to Alexander Calder's pivotal return to France in 1953 and 1954. The show, which runs 19 October to 19 December 2026, takes its name from François Premier, the seventeenth-century stone house in Saché, in the Loire Valley, where the artist settled with his wife Louisa after arriving in France for the first time in two decades.

The exhibition focuses on what the gallery and the Calder Foundation describe as one of the most productive periods of his career. Working first in the countryside outside Aix-en-Provence and then in Saché, Calder produced monumental welded-steel kinetic sculptures alongside saturated gouaches and inks made in a converted carriage shed. The centrepiece is Les Granettes (1953), a standing mobile built in a local Provençal blacksmith's shop that has not been shown in public for 72 years; it appears alongside The Putney Mobile (1954), making its first public showing in Europe.

The gallery marks the opening with a reception on Monday from 6 to 8 pm. The show is accompanied by a film chapter drawing on Agnès Varda's photographs of Calder's French years, alongside conversations with her daughter Rosalie Varda and the artist's grandson Alexander S. C. Rower.

The timing places the exhibition at the heart of Paris Art Week: Art Basel Paris opens on Tuesday, and the Calder show is already being flagged as one of the week's must-see gallery presentations. Admission to the gallery is free with no advance booking required.