Anthony Caro Centre
Anthony Caro (b. New Malden, 1924, d. London, 2013) played a pivotal role in the development of twentieth-century sculpture. In the early 1960s, he began making brightly painted, abstract steel structures that he positioned directly on the floor, the omission of a pedestal marking a radical shift in the dynamic between work and viewer. Using prefabricated steel elements salvaged from scrap yards alongside found objects from his material surrounds, Caro developed new ways of making sculpture that would be more immediately expressive. Throughout his career Caro worked extensively in steel but also in a diverse range of other materials including bronze, silver, lead, clay, stoneware, wood, paper and perspex.
Caro’s constant reinvention of the language of sculpture, as well as his influential teaching at St. Martin’s School of Art in London, distinguished him as the successor to artists such as Henry Moore and David Smith. This also led to major collaborations with architects Frank Gehry, Tadeo Ando, and Norman Foster, the latter of whom he worked with on the Millenium Bridge (1997-2000) alongside engineers Arup. At the turn of the millennium Caro engaged in multiple large-scale series of narrative works including The Last Judgement (1995-99) and The Chapel of Light (2008) in Beaubourg, France.
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 since Henry Moore in 1963.
The Anthony Caro Centre is dedicated to supporting Caro’s artistic legacy. Based at the site of his former studio in Camden, north London, the Centre is responsible for exhibiting, storing, conserving and lending the outstanding and varied works in its collection; it also houses the artist’s archive and library.