English artist Anthony Caro left an enormous legacy when he died in 2013 at age eighty-nine. He was celebrated for his sculpture in Britain by the late 1950s, and internatinoally beginning in the early '60s. 

In the early years of his career, Anthony Caro worked on a series of twisting, enigmatic depictions of human and animal figures, works that owed much to the spatial interrogations of Picasso and the broader canon of 20th Century European abstraction.  The works are impressive in their understanding of the gestural and conceptual operations of the era’s avant-garde, but for Caro’s career, served in part as a starting point for his own engagement with space, not only on paper or canvas, but in three dimensions. 

Once a cartoonish vibe takes hold of the works, the weighty hunks of steel in them start seeming faintly comic as well. Some of Caro’s steel consists of repurposed found objects: a hopper used to cart sand; a chunk from some kind of gantry. Rather than being elevated from their humble origins thanks to Caro’s high art, these objects now seem to keep Caro’s art down-to-earth – almost like found anchors that keep his foofy acrylic from blowing away.

With an Anthony Caro show currently on view at Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery in New York, we turn back through the ARTnews archives. Because the show brings together very early and very late work from the British artist’s career, we have selected one old excerpt, by Lawrence Alloway, and one new sample, by William Feaver, who in 2014 wrote an essay following Caro’s death the year before. 

This is the artist’s first exhibition in the US since his death in 2013 and his sixth with Mitchell-Innes & Nash, who has exclusively represented Caro in New York for 14 years. The exhibition features work spanning Caro’s 60-year career and highlights the artist’s fearless and constant innovation throughout his lifetime.

The exhibition brings together late British artist Sir Anthony Caro’s works spanning his sixty years career highlighting the artist’s fearless and constant innovation. 

The sculptor passed away a year ago this month, just as his major show in Venice was coming to a close. He is remembered here by the photographer who was working with him, and in a new book about his life and art.

Art Historian, Michael Fried, and artist, Charles Ray, discuss the life and work of Anthony Caro.

Sculptor Anthony Caro delighted in instigating huge challenges for himself.

Earlier this year, Jon Isherwood sat down with longtime friend Sir Anthony Caro in his London studio. The idea was simple: Would it be interesting to generate a conversation between two sculptors whose work is very diferent, but who share many common influences?  In some ways, their discussion was simply an extension of an ongoing dialogue that has lasted for more than three decades, ranging across many topics, from studio practice and artistic process to their shared connnection with Bennington College in Vermont.