Press release
138KB
january 07, 2022 - Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian to Present Exhibition in London Uniting Sculptures by Anthony Caro with Paintings by His Friends and Peers
America made me see that there are no barriers and no regulations.
—Anthony Caro
LONDON, January 7, 2022—Gagosian is pleased to announce Caro and North American Painters, an exhibition of sculptures by #anthonycaro from the 1960s and 1970s shown together with contemporaneous paintings by his friends and peers.
Contextualizing aesthetic dialogues between Caro and his fellow artists, Caro and North American Painters features significant floor sculptures by Caro including Capital (1960), Month of May (1963), Smoulder (1965), and Hog Flats (1974). Paired with these works are paintings by American artists #helenfrankenthaler, #kennethnoland, #julesolitski, and #larrypoons, as well as Canadian artist Jack Bush.
Caro was among the most influential British sculptors of his generation and his career had a transatlantic reach. During a trip to the United States in 1959, he observed the emerging American art firsthand, encountering the work of David Smith and befriending Frankenthaler, Noland, and critic Clement Greenberg. Upon his return to London, he initiated a radical new approach to his practice by welding and bolting together steel beams, plates, tubes, and other elements. In the 1960s he painted these constructions in bold, flat colors, developing a range of other finishes over the course of the subsequent decade. As one of the first artists to discard the traditional sculptural pedestal, Caro made works that occupy the same space as the viewer, and by grounding them with horizontal elements combined with linear and planar structures, he effectively activated their surroundings.
Caro’s innovations in composition, geometry, and the use of color and space had echoes in the work of the painters he admired. Loosely grouped under the banner of Color Field painting or Post-painterly Abstraction, these artists’ work was acknowledged by Greenberg for its “lucidity” of color and “physical clarity and openness.” Approaching the support as a flat, unbroken plane, Bush, Frankenthaler, Noland, and Poons applied dilute oil and acrylic paint to raw canvas, generating compositions with highly saturated colors. Olitski experimented further through use of a spray gun, producing paintings marked by fields of brilliant hues. In Noland’s case, this investigation of color and form led to his development of shaped canvases. Such inventions have particular resonance when considered alongside Caro’s use of industrial materials.
In addition to his influential tenure at London’s Saint Martin’s School of Art, Caro returned to the United States from 1963 through 1965, having accepted a teaching post at Bennington College, Vermont. There, he met frequently with Olitski, who was on the faculty, and with Noland, who
lived nearby. Frankenthaler also had close ties to Bennington, having graduated from the college
in 1949. Caro would maintain close friendships with vanguard American painters of his generation throughout his career, exchanging ideas and exploring new aesthetic possibilities. According to
Paul Moorhouse, curator of the exhibition and chief executive of the #anthonycaro Centre, “During the early 1960s, Caro pioneered the creation of abstract sculpture, but he was not alone. His conversations with Noland, Olitski, and other painters had a two-way significance, encouraging all these artists to explore new, radical approaches. This exhibition reveals the ways that—together—they transformed the language of art.”
A catalogue featuring an essay by Moorhouse and drawing on archival materials, including correspondence between Caro and his fellow artists, will be published to accompany the exhibition.
The Summer 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly features “Helen Frankenthaler: A Painter’s Sculptures”—an account of Frankenthaler’s first body of sculpture, made in Caro’s studio in the summer of 1972, with texts by both artists.
Sir #anthonycaro was born in New Malden, England, in 1924, and died in London in 2013. Collections include the British Council, London; Tate, London; Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Exhibitions include Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1963); Hayward Gallery, London (1969); Museum of Modern Art, New York (1975, traveled to Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston); Museum of #contemporaryart, Tokyo (1995); Tate Britain, London (2005); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2011); and Museo Correr, Venice (2013). Caro was knighted in 1987 and received the Order of Merit in 2000.
Related news |
||
|
|
|
february 03, 2023
|
december 09, 2022
|
august 29, 2022
|
|
My pictures are full of climates, abstract climates, and not nature per se. But a feeling. And the feeling of an order that is ass... |
9 February – 7 May 2023Whitechapel Gallery presents a major exhibition of 150 paintings from an overlooked generation of 80 intern... |
SEOUL, August 29, 2022—Gagosian is pleased to participate in the inaugural edition of Frieze #seoul with a presentation of works b... |
Download all 
You might be interested in |
||
|
|
|
january 28, 2022
|
november 22, 2021
|
may 18, 2021
|
|
NEW YORK, January 28, 2022—Gagosian is pleased to announce its return to Zona #macomexico #arte Contemporáneo for the first time s... |
Gagosian is pleased to announce its participation in Art Basel Miami Beach 2021 with a presentation of modern and contemporary wor... |
I had the landscape in my arms when I painted it. I had the landscapes in my mind and shoulder and wrist. —Helen FrankenthalerGago... |
Italian 
Download all 
Share
Share via mail 
Automotive
Sport
Events
Art&Culture
Design
Fashion&Beauty
Food&Hospitality
Technology
Nautica
Racing
Excellence
Corporate
OffBeat
Green
Gift
Pop
Heritage
Entertainment
Health & Wellness