Calder playing cards

Each letter, number, and suit (spade, heart, club, and diamond) was carefully clipped from a series of over forty vivid gouache paintings from the 1970s known as the Card Player series.

In these works, Calder depicts sharply dressed poker players around a card table, reviewing their hands and placing bets; oversized depictions of the cards in play float within the compositions.

Almost 100 unique playing cards are illustrated, with variations on the layouts, shapes, and colors of a traditional deck. All the cards in the Calder Playing Card set are based on the series, pulling completely rendered designs where available and using the artist’s hand-drawn suits to match existing compositions where a card was missing or partially covered. Even the motif on the back of the cards—a thick black outline and blue striping—has been pulled directly from Calder’s gouaches. Players are encouraged to use the unexpected 12 of Spades and 16 of Diamonds as true wild cards (whether they stand in as a Joker or a second Queen of Spades, for example, is up to the player).