Upper Reach

Material

Rusted steel; 223.5 x 132 x 109 cm

Dating

2008-2009

About the artist

The English sculptor Anthony Caro had earned a degree in engineering in 1944, before he studied sculpture at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London. In 1947 he furthered his studies at the Royal Academy of Arts and, after finishing his studies, became Henry Moore’s assistant. At the beginning of his career, Caro created primarily figurative works, which he modelled in clay and cast in bronze. Moore influenced Caro’s early bronze sculptures and, more importantly, familiarised him with modernism, a movement which, so far, had been completely neglected by the Royal Academy.
After visiting the United States and meeting the American sculptor David Smith in 1958, he started to build abstract constructions made out of far-reaching, brightly painted steel plates and pipes. His works caused a sensation, provoking a response from some critics that these constructions were not sculpture at all.
Nevertheless, Caro’s innovations heralded a revolution in art. Within a short period, conventional ideas about materials, surface, scale, form and space were overturned by his radical reworking of all these elements. Foremost was Caro’s insistence on the immediate, real, physical presence of the sculpture – placed directly on the ground – a principle which was widely imitated and subsequently became a touchstone for contemporary sculpture.