Selected Works

Anthony Caro

 
 

Born in 1924 in New Malden, England. Passed away 2013.

Anthony Caro is one of the most influential figures in the development of twentieth-century sculpture and its expanded fields. Born in New Malden, England in 1924, Caro studied engineering at Christ’s College, Cambridge, before training as a sculptor at the Royal Academy Schools, London. After graduating Caro produced early works on paper and in bronze interested in gestural, embodied and often humorous scenes of everyday life. From the 1960s, following a pivotal visit to North America, Caro began making brightly painted, abstract sculptures from scrap steel that he positioned directly on the floor, the omission of a pedestal marking a radical shift in the dynamic between work and viewer. In addition to steel, he also produced works in bronze, lead, silver, stoneware, Perspex and wood, as well as on paper. Throughout Caro’s seven-decade oeuvre, his sculptures in both abstract and figurative form explore the forces and resistances of the human body, as well as the feeling registers of human experience. As art historian Rosalind Krauss observed, “Caro rendered the human form not as it looked from the outside, but how it felt from the inside, with its relationships subjectively conditioned.” Caro’s constant reinvention of the language of abstract sculpture, as well as his influential teaching at St. Martin’s School of Art in London, has distinguished him as the successor to artists such as Henry Moore and David Smith. However, his works were also made and sit in dialogue with other global movements across sculpture, painting and architecture, formatively shaped by travel in South-East Asia in the 1980s and 1990s, as he continued to reinvent his sculptural language.

Caro’s interest in architecture is exemplified in London’s Millennium Bridge (2000), which he designed in collaboration with Arup and Foster + Partners. In 2008 he completed the monumental Chapel of Light installation at the Église Saint Jean-Baptiste, Bourbourg, France, materially setting in stone his role in the history of art.

Mid-career retrospectives of Caro’s work were held at the Hayward Gallery, London (1969), and Museum of Modern Art, New York (1975). In 1992, the British Council organized an exhibition of his sculpture in the ancient setting of Trajan’s Market in Rome, followed by a major exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, in 1995. In celebration of Caro’s eightieth birthday, Tate Britain, London, staged a retrospective in 2005. In 2011, a selection of works dating from 1960 through 2010 were exhibited in the Roof Garden of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Caro’s 2013 retrospective at Museo Correr, Venice, coincided with the 55th Biennale di Venezia and was on view at the time of the artist’s death. In 2015 The Hepworth Wakefield and Yorkshire Sculpture Park held a joint retrospective to celebrate and commemorate Caro’s life and work. Knighted in 1987, he was awarded the Praemium Imperiale Prize for Sculpture by the Japan Art Association in 1992, and was inducted into the Order of Merit in 2000—the first sculptor to be so honoured since Henry Moore in 1963.

 

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2024
Entwined Spaces at Anthony Caro Center, London 
Collection Display at Anthony Caro Centre, London 
Anthony Caro Sculptures, Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden, Wuppertal, Germany 
2023
Caro and Music, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, UK 
Anthony Caro:
The Inspiration of Architecture,
Pitzhanger Manor, London, UK 
2022
Anthony Caro: Six Decades, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin, Germany 
Caro, Roche Court Sculpture Park, Salisbury, UK Anthony Caro: ‘More real, more felt’, Galerie Templon, Paris, France 
2021
Anthony Caro: Exploring Space: Sculpture 1966-69, The Anthony Caro Centre, London, UK
The Presence of Sculpture, The Anthony Caro Centre, London, UK 
2019
Anthony Caro: The Last Judgement Sculpture from the Wrth Collection, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Germany 
Anthony Caro at Cliveden, The National Trust’s Cliveden, Taplow, UK 
Seven Decades, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, UK 
2017
Anthony Caro in the Gardens of the van Buuren Museum, Van Buuren Museum, Belgium 
Table Pieces and Late Sculptures, Galerie Daniel Templon, Brussels, Belgium 
Paper Like Steel, New Art Centre Sculpture Park & Gallery, Salisbury, UK 
Anthony Caro, Galerie Hans Mayer, Düsselforf, Germany 
Anthony Caro: Sculpture Laid Bare, AGO, Ontario, Canada 
First Drawings Last Sculptures, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York, USA 
2016
Bronze and Book Sculptures, Annely Juda Fine Art, London, UK 
Arena Pieces, Galeria Alvaro Alcazar, Madrid, Spain 
2015
Caro in Yorkshire, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Hepworth Wakefield and Leeds City Art Gallery, UK 
Anthony Caro, Works from the 1960’s, Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles, USA 

Public Collections

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto 
Arts Council of Great Britain, London 
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Massachusetts 
The British Council, London 
British Museum, London 
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio 
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas 
Fundacio Antoni Tapies, Barcelona 
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds 
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC 
Joan Miro Foundation, Barcelona 
Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich 
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
Musée nationale d'art moderne Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris 
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Barcelona 
Museum Ludwig, Cologne 
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles 
Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo 
Museum of Modern Art, New York 
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. 
National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul 
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 
Royal Academy of Art, London 
Samsung Museum, Seoul 
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh 
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle 
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 
Tate Gallery, London 
Tel Aviv Museum, Israel 
Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia 
Victoria and Albert Museum, London 
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut 
York University of Fine Art, Toronto, Ontario 

 
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