Anthony Caro  (1924)

Born in 1924, Anthony Caro has played a pivotal role in the development of twentieth century sculpture. After studying sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools in London, he was introduced to modernism when working as an assistant to Henry Moore during the 1950s.  In the early 1960s Caro abandoned his earlier figurative work and started constructing sculptures by welding or bolting together collections of prefabricated metal, such as I-beams, steel plates and meshes.  Caro often works in steel, but also in a diverse range of other materials, including bronze, silver, lead, stoneware, wood and paper.

Caro came to public attention with a show at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1963, where he exhibited large abstract sculptures brightly painted and standing directly on the ground. He is often credited with the significant innovation of removing the sculpture from its plinth and in doing so removing the barrier between the work and the viewer, who is invited to interact with the sculpture from all sides.  This was a radical departure from the way sculpture had hitherto been seen and paved the way for future developments in three-dimensional art.  Caro was an influential teacher at St Martins School of Art in London (1953-1981) and inspired a whole younger generation of British Sculptors. 

Major exhibitions include retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1975), the Trajan Markets, Rome (1992) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (1995), Sculpture into Architecture at the Tate Gallery, London (1991), Sculpture from Painting at the National Gallery, London (1998) and The Last Judgement at the Venice Biennale (1999). He has been awarded many prizes, including the Praemium Imperiale for Sculpture in Tokyo in 1992 and the Lifetime Achievement Award for Sculpture in 1997. He holds many honorary degrees from universities in the UK, USA and Europe. He was knighted in 1987 and received the Order of Merit in May 2000.