Anthony Caro had traditional art training from 1947 to 1952 at the Royal Academy Schools in London which was greatly enriched by the two years (1951–3) he spent as an assistant to Henry Moore. Throughout his career, Caro's work was in a constant state of evolution. During a visit to the USA in 1959, he was influenced by the critic Clement Greenberg and by the work of artists such as Kenneth Noland and David Smith. On his return to the UK, Caro began welding standardised metal units into abstract configurations, which were then further unified by being painted in a single primary colour.
His first solo show at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 1963 brought him considerable critical attention. Through his work and his teaching at St Martin’s School of Art, Caro soon became regarded as a major figure. He was particularly recognised for re-orientating the mainstream of modernist British sculpture into an abstract constructed mode. In the 1970s, Caro worked in large steel factories in Europe and America, exploring possibilities with the material, which he left raw, polished and protected only by a coat of varnish.
Caro had both national and international recognition for his work throughout his career; he was knighted in 1987, received the Praemium Imperiale for Sculpture in 1992 and the Lifetime Achievement Award for Sculpture in 1997. Along with Norman Foster and Chris Wise, he designed the London Millennium Footbridge. Caro’s work has been collected and exhibited worldwide, with recent solo exhibitions at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Tate Britain, The National Gallery in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.