Anthony Caro: The Last Sculptures, Annely Juda Fine Art

Along with Henry Moore, Anthony Caro is the name on everyone’s lips when talking about modern British sculpture. He was knighted (rare for artists) and after almost universal critical acclaim, his welded steel forms have made him one of Britain’s most successful exports; and for good reason. Caro’s masterpiece Early One Morning, assembled from painted red slabs and beams of metal, sculpts out an uplifting composition that is ‘like music’. Or as Caro put it: ‘a kind of wrought lyric’. This piece is on permanent display at Tate Britain. 
Annely Juda displays 25 of Caro’s later works, as he began to introduce Perspex into his abstract creations. It was in the 1960s that Caro was first drawn to abstraction and abandoned his figurative work, following the inspiration of ‘Abstract Expressionist’ sculpture by David Smith and the colour-field paintings of Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis and Jules Olitski. His remaking of sculpture away from the plinth was also accompanied by a serious intellectual process. Clement Greenberg, the American art critic and father of formalism, exchanged letters with Caro throughout their lives and a monograph including one of Greenberg’s essays is available at the exhibition.
Of these later Perspex works expect some of the curved and twisted stainless steel forms that define Caro’s oeuvre, but lightened with a painted or brightly translucent piece of plastic. The charming Fruit (2013) might be a 3D riff on the still life, but the altogether more ambitious End of Time (2013), with its jagged, red sheet slicing through pipes, feels like it has graver statements to make. Other highlights include Sackbut (2011-12) and Card Game (2013), both interpretations of Cézanne’s famous ‘Card Players’ series of paintings on permanent display at the Courtauld Gallery in Somerset House. 'Card Game' is a particular striking piece where collapsed metal sheets merge around the frame of a table that has been cleft by jagged planes of Perspex. 
This show is also particularly resonant following Caro’s death last October. It’s sad that these are not just the ‘Late’ but the ‘Last Sculptures’ of one of the leading lights of British modern art.