A new exhibition confirms Sir Anthony Caro as Britain’s greatest living
sculptor writes Gerald Isaaman

Wheel full circle. Anthony Caro will no doubt dismiss such a view of the major retrospective – and respected – exhibition of his work now on show at Tate Britain, to mark, appropriately, his 80th birthday year.
He is, after all, Britain’s most celebrated sculptor, a cherubic-faced man of enormous energy and intellect who changed the face of sculpture in this country. The artist, they claim, who took sculpture off its traditional pedestal.
Not true in fact, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, for whom Caro worked as an assistant, did that long before him, avant garde Americans too. And he, almost inevitably, followed in Moore’s footsteps, bravely creating large lumpen figures of life that distorted yet enhanced the physical energy of the human form.
Then he crossed the Atlantic and entered a new arena of abstraction that inspired his most admired work, which broke down barriers with its brave, revolutionary zeal and made him famous and loved to some, infamous and misunderstood to others.
It’s typical, at least in this country, for the establishment to try to pull down the new maverick, the more so if they wear the Hampstead badge of courage – Caro has lived in Frognal for more than half a century – as did Moore, Hepworth and others before him.
His highly coloured, dazzling steel sculptures, all angles and light, created a new world stretching for the sun like some giant tree or skyscraper, demanding attention and discussion, a brave new world of creation.
There are, naturally, excellent examples of these earlier works in the Tate tribute, the bronzes Man Holding his Foot, from 1954, Man Taking Off his Shirt, dated 1955-56, and Cigarette Smoker 1 from 1957 providing the launch pad for a sculptor seeking new ways of depicting day to day existence.
Suddenly – and dramatically – it all changes, as if Caro had undergone a religious renaissance, throwing out his old bible of beliefs and finding a new saviour with sparkling steel.
Early One Morning, dated 1962, steel and aluminium, painted in radical red is one of the most daring, and forms the cover picture of the Caro catalogue. So too from the 1960s comes Took Flight, all magenta, orange and green, the organic form of Orangerie and yellow Sun Feast, in which Caro explores his new world of freedom and space with the playfulness of a babe.
The years that follow are filled with new experiments and challenges as the architectural nature of sculpture becomes highlighted and apparent, and Caro enjoys the exploration and delight of giving rebirth to steel beams, now waxed, and bizarre shapes made from broken forms. He makes muscular forms tell sensitive stories that express simple and strangled emotions.
From his Camden Town workshop emerged, for instance, Night Movements, 1987-1990, a four-part ensemble of steel stained green, strange, hooded, and malevolent pieces that guard the entrance to the Tate show. They are full of haunting holes of mystery.
But before you arrive this far, there is a new giant 2004 sculpture called Millbank Steps that dwarfs the visitor as he or she enters the towering sculpture itself.
It is hard edged and rough, yet equally soft and embracing, a symphony of orange rusted steel that invites you inside to contemplate its inner spaces and the turrets of turmoil above.
Yet this exhibition displays what you might call the other Caro, the one who has turned to the art of the potter, working with the Provence ceramicist Hans Spinner, in producing other images. There are his table top sculptures that do not inhibit the way some of the huge sculptures do and, in particular, The Last Judgment, all stoneware, wood, steel, bronze, concrete and plaster.
This shows Caro’s return to figurative art, albeit it abstracted, but more recognisable like the relief of some ancient civilisation, telling us tales of obscene war and the desire for love in fascinating grotesque forms.
This is, for me, part of the newer Caro, the one that gave us The Barbarians, where you can connect more easily with the past through the bulges of warriors on horses, whirling chariot wheels that sent the yelling Trojans and/or Bush’s tanks into indecent battle and destruction.
The cry is Caro’s view of the world. Go take a peek before the Tate show closes on April 17.
He has worked hard for his success. Now is the time to trumpet his triumphs.
• Anthony Caro retrospective at Tate Britain runs until April 17. Entrance is free.