Square Spray

“We tend to discount a lot of meaning that goes on in life that’s non-verbal. Color can convey a total range of mood and expression, of one’s experiences in life, without having to give it descriptive or literary qualities.” - Kenneth Noland

Renowned for his abstract, boldly colored and radically de-centered sculptures, Anthony Caro is often said to be the most important British sculptor since Henry Moore. He began his career as Moore’s part-time assistant in the early 1950s. Yet it was his later encounters with American abstractionists—as well as their formalist critic-champion, Clement Greenberg—that would prove most formative for Caro’s practice. His own collection not only features remarkable works by these leading figures, but also reveals an extraordinary richness of personal, artistic and collecting connections between Caro and his fellow artists, particularly with Helen Frankenthaler, with whom he cultivated a rich artistic relationship that inspired both artists to delve into each other's mediums and reside in each other's studios in New York and London. This collaboration engendered a profound exchange and cross-pollination, significantly advancing global artistic development of the time.

Across his career, Caro would grow closer to Noland, Frankenthaler, David Smith, Larry Poons, Jack Bush, and Jules Olitski—the latter of whom was alongside him on the faculty at Bennington College in Vermont, where he taught from 1963 to 1965—and acquired superb examples of their work. The appreciation was mutual. In 1975, when William Rubin staged a major Caro retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Greenberg, Olitski, Frankenthaler and Noland all lent important sculptures from their personal collections.

Having first met Greenberg in his London studio in 1959, in October that year Caro made his first trip to the United States. He visited museums, galleries and art schools across the country, and met artists including Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, and David Smith. He was inspired to break away completely from his previous figurative style, which had hitherto consisted of weighty, roughhewn human figures in clay and bronze. On his return to London he began to assemble abstract sculptures from discrete scrap-metal components, and abandoned the plinth to occupy the viewer’s space. “I was very taken by American thinking and the whole abstraction idea”, he later reflected. “It was getting away from the English harking towards surrealism and the literary” (A. Caro quoted in N. Wroe, “Anthony Caro: a life in sculpture”, The Guardian, March 16th, 2012).

Greenberg extolled the clarity and lucidity of the “Color Fields” of artists such as Noland, and Caro’s own rethinking of geometry, color and form in space chimed closely with these ideas. Noland was a particularly close friend, and is well-represented in Caro’s collection. Purkinje Effect (1964)—an impressive “chevron” painting that is a highlight of the group—is complemented by examples of Noland’s other series including his distinctive shaped canvases. With their unusual silhouettes and spatial presence, these might be seen to reflect a sculptural influence from Caro: one such work, Untitled (to Tony, Sheila, Tim and Paul) (1976) is dedicated to the artist and his family.

Caro also maintained friendships with British artists, and was an influential teacher. His students at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London—where he taught from 1953 until 1981—included many who would go on to develop their own boundary-breaking sculptural practices, such as Barry Flanagan, Gilbert & George, Phillip King, and Richard Long. Among the British artists in Caro’s collection are Winston Branch, John Hoyland, and David Hockney. Hockney—a stablemate of Caro’s at the London gallery of John Kasmin, who also championed post-painterly American abstraction—created intimate portraits in ink of Caro and his wife, the artist Sheila Girling.

A spectacular array of color, form and innovation, the collection of Anthony Caro captures a thrilling period in American and British art. It also represents a transatlantic exchange of ideas that was enormously significant for Caro himself, and thus to the course of sculpture in the twentieth century.

With influences going in both directions, it demonstrates how great art is never made in a vacuum, but is nourished by a rich complexity of personal and creative connections. “… I rely profoundly on an inner insistence that work and friendship—when they’re both from the gut, transcend the devils”, wrote Frankenthaler to Caro after her time in London. “I was able to silhouette that thought much more after the London visit, thanks to you … Wasn’t it wonderful?” (H. Frankenthaler quoted in L. Mahony, “Helen Frankenthaler: A Painter’s Sculptures”, Gagosian Quarterly, Summer 2021).