The Apprentice Years

  Born in 1924 in New Malden (United Kingdom), Anthony Caro is one of the forerunners of abstract contemporary sculpture.

   After studying at the Royal Academy, he went on to become the assistant of sculptor Henry Moore. Towards the mid-'50s, he began designing expressionist figures, in which he favoured posture and action. In 1959, he opted for a change in scenery and left for the United States. This stay marked a pivotal point in his journey as an artist. He started working with new materials and experimenting with steel, leading to his first abstract creations.

   In the '60s, he became the front-runner of abstract and constructivist sculpture. In the decades that followed, Caro sculptures developed a syntax that was displayed by the use of raw metal, the position of the sculpture on the bare ground, and a search for balance between shapes in space and the approach to emptiness as a material component of expression.




The Relationship between Sculpture and Architecture

   "Architecture has always fascinated me.... Architecture can teach the sculptor discipline, repetition, it teaches how to respond to open air, outside spaces...." During the '80s, the artist continued his work on sculpture, and enhanced it, both with respect to its status and its position. In order to grasp it in all its complexity, it is appropriate to "study" it: the spectator is invited to walk along it, walk around it, walk away from it, approach it, contemplate it, and perceive it under every possible angle. Progressively, the receptivity of the sculpture to the issues related to architecture is developed, seen by the coexistence of the elements of vocabulary, such as: inside-outside, volume-compartment, traverse-elevated, closed-open, penetrable-passable... The term "sculptitecture", frequently employed by the artist, is representative of a quest inspired by these multiple correlations.