The sculptor Sir Anthony Caro, regarded as one of the leading artists of his generation and represented in museum collections all over the world, has died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 89.
Major retrospectives of his sculpture in recent years – which almost invariably also featured brand new work – have seen his reputation steadily grow; an exhibition of his work is currently on display at the Correr Museum in Venice.
Caro was described as “a man of great humility and humanity” by Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, which filled the main galleries of Tate Britain with his work in 2005.
Uniquely among British sculptors, thousands of pedestrians walk across Caro’s work every day: he was the artist in the design team which created the Millennium bridge across the Thames in London, linking St Paul’s Cathedral and Tate Modern.
Innovative
Caro became instantly famous with an exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1963 with brilliantly coloured abstract sculptures, breaking the tradition of displaying sculptures isolated on plinths by placing them directly on the floor, an innovation much copied since. His degree from Christ's College Cambridge was in engineering, before he went on to study sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools. In the 1950s, Caro worked as an assistant to 20th-century sculpture, Henry Moore.
Serota ranked him among the great names in the world of sculpture. "Anthony Caro was one of the outstanding sculptors of the past 50 years, alongside David Smith, Eduardo Chillida, Donald Judd and Richard Serra. In the 60s, he established a new language for sculpture in a series of elegant, arresting, abstract steel sculptures placed directly on the ground. His development of this vocabulary, building on the legacy of Picasso, but introducing brilliant colour and a refined use of shape and line, was enormously influential in Europe and America."
Caro was married to the painter Sheila Girling, and they had a long personal and working relationship.
– (Guardian service)