Anthony Caro was born in London in 1924 and studied engineering before enrolling at the Royal College of Art in London from 1946 through 1952. He then served as an assistant to Henry Moore for two years before teaching at St. Martins School. He met sculptor David Smith and Robert Motherwell on a trip to New York in 1959, after which he abandoned figurative sculpture in favor of abstract composition. From 1963 -1965, Caro taught at Bennington College in Vermont where he was associated with fellow instructors the painters Jules Olitski, Helen Frankenthaler and Kenneth Noland.
In 1960, Caro made his first abstract sculpture in steel, followed in 1961 with the first painted or polychrome sculpture. Under the influence of David Smith, Caro used the non-traditional technique of welding found or prefabricated steel elements into a formal structural vocabulary.
Caro placed his painted steel works directly on the floor, eschewing the base. This opened up a wide range of expressive possibilities most important of which is the immediacy of the viewer’s response. Besides the large, complex abstract works, Caro has also made small tabletop sculptures, large towers and religious figures.