SIR ANTHONY CARO
Duccio Variations, Gold Blocks and Concerto Pieces
January 11- February 9, 2000

New York, November 1, 2000 Marlborough Gallery New York is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent sculpture, entitled Duccio Variations, Gold Blocks and Concerto Pieces, by internationally acclaimed British sculptor Sir Anthony Caro. On view will be works from these three series, which the artist has been working on for the past three years.

All seven Duccio Variations (1999-2000) will have their debut in New York, after a critically acclaimed showing of three of the pieces from June though September 2000 in the Encounters exhibition organized by the National Gallery, London. In this landmark exhibition, Neil MacGregor, Director of the National Gallery, and Richard Morphet, Curator of the exhibition, invited twenty-four prominent living artists from around the world to create a work inspired by an artwork from the museum’s permanent collection. Caro selected the famed Duccio panel of the Annunciation, in which the angel Gabriel alerts the Virgin Mary of her fate. The painting is in an early Renaissance style; the gold background shows the Byzantine influence, but a sense of depth, three-dimensionality and foreshortening gives the architectural space a structural and thematic significance.

On choosing this work from the National Gallery’s collection, Caro has said “The Duccio Annunciation emanates feelings of love. It’s a delicate picture, very still. For a long time I have been interested in the relationship between architecture and sculpture, so I concentrated on the architecture of this painting. I’ve treated my seven works based on the Duccio Annunciation as variations on a theme - the theme of the Duccio.’

Caro has been known especially for his work in steel, but although steel is present in two of the Variations, each uses a different material as the artist explores the theme and architectonic nature of the original painting: Duccio Variations No.1 (64 ½ x 56 x 27 in.) steel and walnut wood. Duccio Variations No. 2 (64 ½ x 47 x 25 in.) brass; Duccio Variations No. 3 (63 ½ x 71 x 47 in.) walnut wood; Duccio Variations No. 4 (65 x 64 x 32 in.) medium-density fiberboard and glass fiber painted white; Duccio Variations No. 5 (66 x 48 x 26 in.) Perspex/Lucite; Duccio Variations No. 6 (65 x 68 x 39) cast iron; Duccio Variations No. 7 (64 ½ x 56 x 31 in.) sandstone and steel. Just as Cezanne in the Mont St Victoire paintings or, in music, Brahms in his Variations on a Theme of Haydn, Caro has taken a single subject matter and made a number of different interpretations.

In the Gold Block series of 1997-1999, Caro presents five medium-size and three larger constructions of steel and stoneware. Each of these is based on a simple block shape, developed in various ways. The series was started when Caro saw five clay blocks when working with the ceramicist Hans Spinner in Grasse, France. They were not quite square, but nearly right angled, a shape often avoided in sculpture. Caro continued the exploration of right angles in Pieced Block, made of wood and steel. This work, unlike the others, suggests an inside which can be explored. Subsequently he asked Spinner to make two larger clay blocks, each with rectangular holes. These are surrounded by and penetrated by steel parts, to make Block Capital and Capital Letter.

Caro again departs from steel in the Concerto pieces made of bronze and solid cast brass. As the name suggests, these works are inspired by music, in some cases incorporating parts of actual musical instruments. The titles are names of musical instruments and musical terms. Caro often works accompanied by classical music, with Mozart, Schubert and Brahms being particular favourites.

Caro’s showing in Encounters, and his inclusion in the recently opened Tate Modern on Bankside, London, testify to the central position of his work in the continuing history of contemporary art. Writing for the Sunday Telegraph, Bryan Robertson has stated said “Caro’s astonishingly rich inventions have never been seen in the spectacular range, strength and perfection of installation that made the recent Tokyo retrospective so memorable. We must catch up and give honor to genius where it is due…” Of the Duccio Variations, Richard Cork has written “They appear at first to concentrate on the setting, along with the delicate still life Duccio placed between Archangel and Virgin. But the figures’ presence is simply implied in all three and in a polished brass version the entire limpid structure emits a visionary glow.”

Born in 1924, Anthony Caro worked as an assistant to Henry Moore from 1951-53, then taught at St. Martin’s School of Art in London, where he inspired a whole generation of younger sculptors including Phillip King, William Tucker, Barry Flanagan, Richard Long, Bruce MacLean and Gilbert and George. Caro has been a visiting artist and lecturer in many countries, and was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen in 1987 for his services in art. In addition to the National Gallery exhibition and the installation at Tate Modern, Caro was most recently represented at last year’s Venice Biennale with The Last Judgement, a 25-part installation currently on display at the Museo des Bellas Artes, Bilbao, before returning to Künzelsau, Germany for the opening of the new Museum Würth in spring 2001.

This will be the artist’s second showing at Marlborough since joining the Gallery in 1997, following the closure of the André Emmerich Gallery, where he had had solo exhibition annually or biannually between 1964 and 1998. Since his first visit to the USA in 1959 Caro has been closely associated with the States. He taught at Bennington College, Vermont, 1963-1965, and for the next twenty years continued to visit the United States three to four times a year, usually working for about a month each time. In 1985 he acquired his own US studio at Ancram, New York state, where he worked every summer for the next 15 years. In 1982 he was co-founder of the Triangle Artists’ Workshop at Pine Plains, New York, participating annually until 1991.

Caro’s sculpture can be found in public and private collections the world over, including in the USA: Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield; Baltimore Museum of Art; Boston Museum of Fine Arts; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Cleveland Museum of Art; Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester; Dallas Museum of Art; Detroit Institute of Art; Everson Museum, Syracuse; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Houston Museum of Fine Arts; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; North Caroline Museum of Art, Raleigh; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Phillips Collection, Washington DC; Portland Art Museum, Rose Art Museum, Waltham; Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation, New York; Speed Art Museum, Louisville; Storm King Art Center, Mountainville; Toledo Museum of Art; Saint Louis Art Museum; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond and Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis.

Duccio Variations, Gold Blocks and Concerto Pieces will open on January 11, 2001 with a reception for the artist, who will be in New York for the occasion. A fully color-illustrated catalogue will be available at the time of the exhibition, with an introductory essay by Richard Morphet, Keeper of the Modern Collection of the Tate Gallery, London 1986-1998 and Curator of the Encounters exhibition.

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