Sir Anthony Caro (1924 – 2013)

The family of Sir Anthony Caro OM, CBE, have confirmed that he died following a sudden heart attack on Wednesday 23 October. Widely regarded as the greatest British sculptor of his generation, he played a pivotal role in the development of twentieth century sculpture. He was born in Surrey in 1924 and later graduated with a degree in engineering, but after studying sculpture at the Royal Academy Schools in London from 1947-1952, he worked as an assistant to Henry Moore in the 1950s.

He came to public attention with a show at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1963, where he exhibited large abstract sculptures. His teaching at St Martin’s School of Art in London from 1953 to 1981 was very influential, and his work inspired a whole younger generation of British sculptors including Tony Cragg, Richard Long and Gilbert & George. He was knighted in 1987 and received the Order of Merit in May 2000.

Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate, said: “Anthony Caro was one of the outstanding sculptors of the past fifty years… In the sixties 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… was enormously influential in Europe and America… Caro was a man of great humility and humanity whose abundant creativity, even as he approached the age of ninety, was still evident in the most recent work shown in exhibitions in Venice and London earlier this year.”