Sir Caro was born on the 8th of March 1924 in New Malden, Surrey. He took a degree in engineering at Cambridge and served in the Navy during World War II. He then went on to study art, first at London's Regent Street Polytechnic School from 1946 to 1947 and then at the Royal Academy Schools from 1947 to 1952. He came to prominence in 1963 after a show at the Whitechapel Gallery where he exhibited large, brightly painted, abstract sculptures. They were displayed standing directly on the ground rather than on plinths and this allowed the viewer to relate to the work in a more direct and immediate fashion.
Sir Anthony Caro's major exhibitions include retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1975) Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (1995) "Sculpture into Architecture" at the Tate, London (1991) and "The Last Judgement" at the Venice Biennale (1999) He holds many honorary degrees, was knighted in 1987 and received the Order of Merit in May 2000.
We suggest the following stories as good places to start within the collection:
- Choosing to become an artist, school and university
- Re-thinking sculpture
- Clement Greenberg's influence on my work
- The Millennium Bridge: collaborating with Norman Foster