Anthony Caro

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 was lauded as the greatest British sculptor of his generation. to a Jewish family and was the youngest of three children. Caro was educated at Charterhouse School, where his housemaster introduced him to British sculptor Charles Wheeler. ) 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 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.

From 1970 onwards, Caro began to make sculptures in rusted, then varnished or waxed, steel. 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 long, inspired by the temple to Zeus at Olympia. In 2008, Caro opened his "Chapel of Light" installation in the Saint Jean-Baptiste Church of Bourbourg (France), 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.

Teaching

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".

Exhibitions

Since the 1950s, Caro's work has been shown in museums and galleries worldwide. and his first solo show in London was at the Gimpel Fils Gallery the next year. Another solo show was a pivotal exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1963. In the same year he showed at the São Paulo Biennale with John Hoyland.

In 2004, to honour his 80th birthday, Tate Britain and Kenwood House held exhibitions of his work. Therein at his 1967 premier showing at the Kasmin gallery, included in the works exhibited was the seminal multi-piece painted steel sculpture Prairie which employs visual illusionism. Of this sculpture the American art historian Michael Fried reviewing the exhibition in ArtForum said that ..."I believe that Prairie is a masterpiece, one of the great works of modern art, a touchstone for future sculpture"...

Caro's museum exhibitions include "Anthony Caro: A Retrospective" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1975, travelled to Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston); "Anthony Caro", Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (1995); "Anthony Caro", Tate Britain, London (2005); In 2012 the Yale Center for British Art presented "Caro: Close Up".

From 1 June to 27 October 2013 in connection with the 55th Venice Biennale, he exhibited at the Museo Correr, Venice, Italy. The exhibit was on at the time of his death.

Art market Caro highest selling sculpture in the art market was Sculpture Two (1962), who sold by £1.4 million ($2.45 million) at Sotheby's London, in February 2006.

Recognition Caro was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1969 New Year Honours. He was knighted in the 1987 Birthday Honours and received the Order of Merit in May 2000. He was awarded many prizes, including the Praemium Imperiale for Sculpture in Tokyo in 1992 and the Lifetime Achievement Award for Sculpture in 1997.

Personal life In 1949, Caro married the painter Sheila Girling and they had two sons together: Timothy (born 1951), a zoologist; and Paul (born 1958), a painter.

Death Caro was 89 when he died of a heart attack on 23 October 2013. He was lauded as a "gentle man with a pioneering spirit" by BBC arts editor Will Gompertz and "one of the greatest sculptors in the second half of the twentieth century" by Royal Academy of Arts chief executive Charles Saumarez Smith. He is buried in the churchyard of Worth Matravers, Dorset. Michael Fried remarked on his passing, "he was a life force of extraordinary magnitude and generosity, and simply calling him to mind is, and is likely to remain, a source of joy."