Sir Anthony Alfred Caro (8 March 1924 – 23 October 2013) was an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblages of metal using 'found' and industrial objects. He began as a member of the modernist school, having worked with Henry Moore early in his career. He was lauded as the greatest British sculptor of his generation.
Anthony Caro was born in New Malden, Surrey, England to a Jewish family and was the youngest of three children.
When Caro was three, his father, a stockbroker, moved the family to a farm in Churt, Surrey. Caro was educated at Charterhouse School, where his housemaster introduced him to British sculptor Charles Wheeler. During holidays, he studied at the Farnham School of Art (now the University for the Creative Arts) and worked in Wheeler's studio
When he left school he spent a brief period in an architect's office in Guildford drawing plans, which he did not take to, so his father suggested he study engineering. He later earned a degree in engineering at Christ's College, Cambridge.
In 1946, after time in the Royal Navy, he studied sculpture at the Regent Street Polytechnic before pursuing further studies at the Royal Academy Schools from 1947 until 1952.
Anthony Caro encountered modernism at art school, and when working as a studio assistant to Henry Moore from 1951 to 1953. In 1955 he exhibited two sculptures in the group exhibition New Painters and Painter-Sculptors at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London and in 1956 he had his first solo show at Galleria del Naviglio in Milan.
In 1959 Caro was awarded a Ford Foundation scholarship to undertake a research trip to the United States of America, which radically changed his approach to sculpture. During this trip he met the critic Clement Greenberg, as well as the colour field painters Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler and Robert Motherwell, for the first time. After being introduced to the American sculptor David Smith, he abandoned his earlier figurative work and started constructing sculptures by welding or bolting together pieces of steel such as I-beams, steel plates and meshes. Twenty Four Hours (1960), in Tate Britain since 1975, is one of his earliest abstract sculptures in painted steel. Often the finished piece was then painted in a bold flat colour.
Caro found international success in the late 1950s. He is often credited with the significant innovation of removing the sculpture from its plinth, building upon the steps David Smith and Constantin Brâncuși had taken. Caro's sculptures are usually self-supporting and sit directly on the floor. In doing so, they remove a barrier between the work and the viewer, who is invited to approach and interact with the sculpture from all sides.
In 1963 Caro moved to Bennington, Vermont, where he made a body of abstract, brightly coloured sculptures, including Slow Movement (1965), which is now part of the Arts Council Collection. In 1964 he opened his first exhibition in New York at the Andre Emmerich Gallery, showcasing these bold new works.
From 1970 onwards, Caro began to make sculptures in rusted, then varnished or waxed, steel. In 1972 he made a significant series of sculptures at Ripamonte Factory in Veduggio, which included fourteen new works in soft edge roll end steel. This way of working continued, and from 1974 to 1976 Caro worked at York Steel Company Factory in Toronto, where he produced 37 large-scale sculptures later known as the Flats series.
In 1978, Caro was commissioned to design a sculpture for architect I M Pei's new East Wing building of the National Gallery, Washington, DC. This sculpture, National Gallery Ledge Piece (1978), was architectural in scale and installed in situ.
In 1980, Caro was working towards an exhibition of British abstract art in South African townships when he met Robert Loder. In 1981, when staying in New York State, the pair, alongside curator Terry Fenton and painter and wife of Caro Sheila Girling, developed the idea of running workshops for professional artists, which became the Triangle Arts Trust. They held the first Triangle workshop in 1982 for thirty sculptors and painters from the US, the UK and Canada at Pine Plains, New York.
Caro's work changed direction in the 1980s with the introduction of more literal elements, with a series of figures drawn from classical Greece. After visiting Greece in 1985, and closely studying classical friezes, he embarked on a series of large-scale narrative works, including After Olympia, a panorama more than 23 metres (75 ft) long, inspired by the temple to Zeus at Olympia. Another large scale installation piece, Sea Music, stands on the quay at Poole, Dorset.
In the early 2000s, his work featured nearly life-size equestrian figures built from fragments of wood and terra cotta on gymnasts' vaulting horses. In 2008, Caro opened his "Chapel of Light" installation in the Saint Jean-Baptiste Church of Bourbourg (France), a permanent sculptural installation made between 2001 and 2008 that is integrated into the architecture of the church. In 2008 he also exhibited four figurative head sculptures at the National Portrait Gallery, London. In 2011 the Metropolitan Museum of Art installed five works by Caro on their rooftop. As of 2012, Caro was working on an immense, multipart sculpture that would occupy three blocks of Midtown Park Avenue.
Caro was also a tutor at Saint Martin's School of Art in London from 1953 to 1981, inspiring a younger generation of British abstract sculptors, led by former students and assistants including Phillip King, Tim Scott, William G. Tucker, Peter Hide, and Richard Deacon; as well as a reaction group including Bruce McLean, Barry Flanagan, Richard Long, David Hall and Gilbert & George. He and several former students were asked to join the seminal 1966 show at the Jewish Museum in New York titled, Primary Structures representing the British influence on the "New Art". Caro taught at Bennington College from 1963 to 1965, along with painter Jules Olitski and sculptor David Smith.
Caro also collaborated with celebrated architects, notably Frank Gehry, with whom he constructed a wooden village in New York in 1987, Norman Foster and I M Pei.
To mark the millennium, Caro worked with British architects Foster + Partners and engineers Arup to design the Millennium Bridge.This involved working with Norman Foster and the engineer Chris Wise, to design the London Millennium Footbridge spanning the Thames between St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tate Modern. The bridge opened in June 2000 and 100,000 people crossed it in the first weekend, and it has since become an iconic part of London's skyline and resulted in changes to codes for bridge building worldwide.
Since the 1950s, Caro's work has been shown in museums and galleries worldwide.