Anthony Caro is widely regarded as Britain’s greatest living sculptor and has enjoyed an international reputation since the early 1960s. Although best known for his work in steel, Caro has also worked in bronze, wood, lead, ceramics and paper, on both large and intimate scales. In 1960 he began making purely abstract sculptures constructed and welded in steel, comprising beams, girders and other elements painted in bright colours. The exhibition of these works at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1963 caused a sensation and heralded a revolution in sculpture. Within a short period conventional ideas about materials, method,surface, scale, form and space were overturned by his radical reworking of all these elements.

Anthony Caro (born 1924) is widely regarded as Britain’s greatest living sculptor and has enjoyed an international reputation since the early 1960s. Although best known for his work in steel, Caro has also worked in bronze, wood, lead, ceramics and paper, on both large and intimate scales. In 1960 he began making purely abstract sculptures constructed and welded in steel, comprising beams, girders and other elements painted in bright colours. The exhibition of these works at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1963 caused a sensation and heralded a revolution in sculpture. Within a short period conventional ideas about materials, method,surface, scale, form and space were overturned by his radical reworking of all these elements.

Since the 1980s, the range of Caro’s work has increased, encompassing ’sculpitecture’ (sculpture that the viewer enters and explores internally); large-scale works that allude to the language of classical architecture; and sculptures that respond to earlier works of art by such masters as Rubens, Manet and Matisse.

This extensively illustrated book includes an overview of Caro’s career by Tare curator Paul Moorhouse, as well as critical essays by Michael Fried and Dave Hickey, a chronology and bibliography.

Foreword

Acknowledgements

’The forms of things unknown’: Anthony Caro’s sculpture

Paul Moorhouse

Anthony Caro: Sculpture 1960-1963

Michael Fried

Anthony Caro: The economies of surprise

Dave Hickey

Chronology

compiled by Rachel Tant

List of exhibited works

Bibliography

compiled by Krzysztof Cieszkowski