Mercury Fountain

In 1937 Calder created the Mercury Fountain for the Spanish Pavilion at the World's Fair.  The fountain was designed with real mercury and is today housed behind glass.  It was in the entrance hall, opposite Pablo Picasso's "Guernica", also designed especially for the exhibition. Like Picasso's painting, this sculpture is a political statement, protesting Franco's siege of the Almaden mercury mines during the Spanish Civil War.