Exhibitors
Agnew's
| Artist: | ANTHONY CARO (1924-) |
| Title: | Late Quarter (Variation F) (1981) |
| Medium: | Bronze and brass |
| Dimensions: | 35.50cm high 22.00cm wide |
| Description/Expertise: |
Without maintaining necessarily that he is a better artist than Turner, I would venture to say that Caro comes closer to the genuine grand manner – genuine because original and un-synthetic – than any English artist before him. Caro studied engineering at Christ’s College, Cambridge and served in the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy during World War II before embarking on his artistic career. He enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools in 1947 and worked as an assistant to Henry Moore between 1951 and 1953. Following his exposure to Moore, Caro began producing expressionistic, figurative sculptures, modelled in clay. There was a marked shift towards abstraction in his work following a trip to America between 1959 and 1960, at which time he befriended Clement Greenberg and the Abstract Expressionist sculptor David Smith. From this point onwards, Caro’s work became more progressive and idiosyncratic, characteristically taking the form of large-scale assemblages of ‘found’, industrial metal objects, which the artist welded together and frequently painted in bold, flat colours. Caro came to public prominence with a show at the Whitechapel gallery in 1963 of fifteen abstract sculptures. He dispensed with the plinths that were usually employed to display sculpture in this exhibition, thereby removing a fundamental barrier between artwork and spectator and encouraging the viewer to interact with his sculptures in a more intimate and ‘real’ way. In so doing, Caro instigated an important revolution in British sculpture. In the late 1960s Caro began producing smaller sculptures, formed from off-cuts of shaped steel supplied to the artist by a factory in Verduggio, Italy. In these works, Caro left his material raw, protected only by a coat of varnish. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Caro began casting sculptures from found objects and experimented with welding sheet bronze. Late Quarter (Variation F), 1981 dates from this period of Caro’s career, which was also the artist’s most overtly Cubist. The 1980s saw a re-emergence of the figure in Caro’s work, culminating in The Trojan War series of 1993/4 and large, public commissions including The Chapel of Light at the Church of St Jean Baptiste in Bourbourg. The vast majority of Caro’s sculptures, including Late Quarter (Variation F), 1981 are unique pieces as opposed to editions. Caro taught at St Martin’s School of Art (now Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design) between 1953 and 1981, inspiring the subsequent generation of British sculptors including Richard Deacon, Barry Flanagan, Hamish Fulton, Gilbert & George, Richard Long and William Tucker. Caro’s major exhibitions to date include retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1975) and Tate Britain, London (2005). He has been awarded the Praemium Imperiale for Sculpture in Tokyo in 1992 and the Lifetime Achievement Award for Sculpture in 1997. Caro was knighted in 1987 and received the Order of Merit in May 2000, the first sculptor to be awarded this honour since Henry Moore. Discussing Late Quarter, 1979 (Dieter Blume, vol. 2, p. 180) Caro made the following interesting observations about the Quarter series: This bronze is on a table-size scale. Here I used wax parts which I had sandcast and cardboard parts which I had fabricated in brass. I searched for trumpets and horns and found a trumpet manufacturer who sold me his throw-aways. I took wax shapes from his tubas and trombones. The square part of this was part of a hat box which I had fabricated in brass and then welded to the other elements' (Young Women's Hebrew Association 1985); 'I own a primitive coastguard cottage in Dorset and when I built the studio there, I promised my neighbours that there would be no noise or flashes from welding equipment etc: I therefore took to working in bronze, so when I go there I take with me some parts made in wax and an assortment of cardboard boxes. These I stick together and transport to London. When they arrive in London, the wax is cast in bronze usually in a sand mould and the cardboard parts are remade in bronze or brass. In the case of Late Quarter the cardboard parts were made from triangular hat boxes, the bowl was cast in wax, the trumpet shape was taken from part of a trombone round which a wax cast was made. When I assembled this sculpture I looked at the relationships of the four major parts and how they corresponded to each other. Within the relationship of these pieces a whole number of sculptures suggested themselves using these parts. I made about 8 variations from this single theme, each one differing and each with a different patina. Each one was a wholly new experience and new challenge and I had a great deal of pleasure making them. All the sculptures using the triangular hat box shape are entitled to using the word Quarter. (Anthony Caro text for the Fitzwilliam Museum, June 1987) |
| Provenance: | The Artist until 2007 |
| Literature: | Dieter Blume, Anthony Caro Catalogue Raisonné, Vol V, 1981, no. 1576 (ill. p. 195 and p. 308) |
| Contact dealer | Dealer details |