One of America's best known sculptors, ''Sandy'' Calder became most famous for his kinetic abstract mobiles. He also executed floor pieces, was a painter in watercolor, oil and gouache, did etchings and serigraphs, made jewelry and tapestries as well as designed theater stage settings and architectural interiors. He was born in Philadelphia, the son of Alexander Sterling Calder and the grandson of Alexander Milne Calder, well-known sculptors of public monumental works. His mother, Nanette Lederer Calder, was a professional portrait painter. Obviously nurtured in an environment of art, from an early age he was making figures from found objects. He also met many of the leading avant-garde artists of the day including Piet Mondrian, who influenced Calder's geometric, non-objective constructions that he began producing in 1931. His floor pieces, entitled ''stabiles'' by Jean Arp, were exhibited in a gallery exhibition organized by Marcel Duchamp, who coined the word ''mobile'' for the hanging, kinetic pieces. Soon Calder was creating many of these wind-driven works. Dancer Martha Graham used several of his sculptures in her modern dance performances, and personnel at the Museum of Modern Art in New York began purchasing pieces from him including his first large-scale piece called ''Whale'' in 1937. During World War II when metal was scarce, he made mobiles and stabiles from carved, painted wood, and in the early 1950s he added to his repertoire wall pieces and mobiles that incorporated sound. Many federal agencies and businesses commissioned works by him, and most major American museums have his pieces in their collections. His death in 1976 occurred coincidentally with a major retrospective of his work at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.