Caro, Anthony (Alfred) (1924- )

English sculptor. His most typical work is large, brightly coloured abstract sculpture, horizontal in aspect, and made from prefabricated metal parts, such as I-beams, angles, and mesh visibly bolted together. An example is Early One Morning (1962; Tate Gallery, London). From the 1980s Caro turned to more traditional sculptural techniques and subjects; in the 1990s, for example, he made a series of bronze figures inspired by the story of the Trojan War.

Caro began making his abstract sculptures of welded metal in the early 1960s, influenced by the sculptures of David Smith and the theories of the leading US art critic Clement Greenberg (1909-1994). In such works as the 3.7 m/12.1 ft-long Midday (1960; Museum of Modern Art, New York), Caro achieved a totally new style characterized by its horizontality, its large scale, and its frank use of ready-made engineering components.

Caro was born in London and studied engineering at Cambridge. He was an assistant to the sculptor Henry Moore 1951-53. Caro's earliest sculptures treat the human figure in crude and lumpish forms, which he said are concerned with ‘what it is like to be inside the body’.

He was knighted in 1987.