Anthony Caro 1924-2013
27 x 48.3 x 20.3 cm
Anthony Caro had conservative training from 1947 to 1952 at the Royal Academy Schools, London, which was greatly enriched by the two years (1951–3) he spent as assistant to Henry Moore. Caro's work has been in a constant state of evolution throughout his career. During a visit to the USA in 1959 he was influenced by the critic Clement Greenberg and by the work of such artists as Kenneth Noland and David Smith. On his return, Caro began welding standardized metal units into abstract configurations, which were then further unified by being painted in a single primary colour. His first solo show at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 1963 brought him considerable critical attention and he soon became regarded as a major figure for his role, both through his work and his teaching at St Martin’s School of Art, in re-orientating the mainstream of modernist British sculpture into an abstract constructed mode. In the 1970s, Caro worked in large steel factories in Europe and America, exploring possibilities with the material, which he left raw and polished, protected only by a coat of varnish.
Caro had both national and international recognition for his work throughout his career; he was knighted in 1987, received the Praemium Imperiale for Sculpture in 1992 and the Lifetime Achievement Award for Sculpture in 1997. Along with Norman Foster and Chris Wise, he designed the London Millennium Footbridge. Caro’s work has been collected and exhibited worldwide, with recent solo exhibitions at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Tate Britain, The National Gallery in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Caro had started working with Stainless Steel as early as 1966 but it wasn’t until the 1970s that he began to explore the medium to a much greater extent; unlike conventional Steel, which cannot be cut easily, Stainless Steel is much more forgiving allowing Caro greater expression.
By 1977, the year preceding Stainless Piece A-E Caro was well established as the leading English sculptor of his generation. That summer, his sculpture could be seen at four leading venues in London including the Hayward and Tate but most notably, at the National Gallery through his curated show The Artist’s Eye, where he had chosen eight old master paintings in the collection, including works by Bellini, Titian and Rembrandt, to sit alongside his Orangerie 1969.
His works in Stainless Steel of the 1970s sit between periods of exploration of clay (early 1970s) and subsequently paper (early 1980s); elucidating similar ideas in these very different mediums, he explored the variation in malleability and appearance that each medium gave. Indeed, it is the expansive scope of his work and his constant investigation and exploration, which have led him to become regarded as one of the foremost pioneers of sculptural practice in the twentieth century, not least in England, but arguably the world.
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist 1979
Willoughby Gerrish Ltd, London, 2019
Private Collection, Europe.
Literature
D. Blume, Anthony Caro: Catalogue Raisonné, vol. II, Table and Related Sculptures 1979-1980, Köln, 1990, p. 144, no. 620, illustrated.K. Wilkin, Anthony Caro: Stainless Steel, London, 2019, p. 90, illustrated.