Early One Morning (Caro)

Last updated

Early One Morning is a 1962 sculpture by British artist Anthony Caro. It has been held by the Tate Gallery in London since 1965.

The abstract sculpture is an arrangement of metal parts painted red, with no obvious focus or representative elements. It comprises a collection of planes and lines arranged along a horizontal axis, with an appearance of lightness that belies its heavy construction. The work measures 2.9 by 6.2 by 3.35 metres (9.5 ft × 20.3 ft × 11.0 ft). The self-supporting work rests on the floor, with no plinth, to be viewed in the round.

Caro was an assistant to Henry Moore in the 1950s, but the works of David Smith inspired Caro to move decisively away from Moore's semi-figurative sculpture towards more abstract works constructed from industrial metal elements. The sculpture was made at Caro's home, but the large work could not be properly viewed in the confined space, so Caro and a friend took it to pieces late at night and reassembled it outside. The name comes from Caro's first proper view of the work, early the next morning. It was originally painted green, to unify the disparate elements into one piece. Caro was unhappy with the result, and Caro's wife Sheila suggested painting it red instead.

The complete sculpture was first exhibited at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in the autumn of 1963, and was included in the exhibition of modern sculpture at the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1966.

It was acquired from the artist by the Contemporary Art Society in 1965, and presented to the Tate Gallery later that year.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Long (artist)</span> British visual artist (born 1945)

Sir Richard Julian Long, is an English sculptor and one of the best-known British land artists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Calder</span> American sculptor (1898–1976)

Alexander Calder was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and his monumental public sculptures. Calder preferred not to analyze his work, saying, "Theories may be all very well for the artist himself, but they shouldn't be broadcast to other people."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony Caro</span> English sculptor

Sir Anthony Alfred Caro was an English abstract sculptor whose work is characterised by assemblages of metal using 'found' industrial objects. He began as a member of the modernist school, having worked with Henry Moore early in his career. He was lauded as the greatest British sculptor of his generation.

Events from the year 1962 in art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Hide</span>

Peter Nicholas Hide is an English born abstract sculptor. A one-time pupil of Sir Anthony Caro, Hide is best known for upright, large-scale welded sculptures made of heavy, rusted industrial scrap steel.

Kenneth Laurence Martin, was an English painter and sculptor who, with his wife Mary Martin and Victor Pasmore, was a leading figure in the revival of Constructivism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Moore</span> English artist known for sculpture (1898–1986)

Henry Spencer Moore was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. Moore also produced many drawings, including a series depicting Londoners sheltering from the Blitz during the Second World War, along with other graphic works on paper.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Bowling</span> British artist (born 1934)

Sir Richard Sheridan Patrick Michael Aloysius Franklin Bowling(né Richard Sheridan Franklin Bowling; born 26 February 1934), known as Frank Bowling, is a British artist who was born in British Guiana. He is particularly renowned for his large-scale, abstract "Map" paintings, which relate to abstract expressionism, colour field painting and lyrical abstraction. Bowling has been described as "one of Britain’s greatest living abstract painters", as "one of the most distinguished black artists to emerge from post-war British art schools" and as a "modern master". British cultural critic and theorist Stuart Hall situates Bowling’s career within a first generation, or “wave” of post-war, Black-British art, one characterised by postwar politics and British decolonisation. He is the first black artist to be elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isaac Witkin</span>

Isaac Witkin was an internationally renowned modern sculptor born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Witkin entered Saint Martin's School of Art in London in 1957 and studied under Sir Anthony Caro and alongside artists including Phillip King, William G. Tucker, David Annesley, and Michael Bolus. Witkin helped create a new style of sculpture which led to this New Generation of sculptors and their innovating abstract forms of modern sculpture reaching and changing the art world. Witkin's abstract works of usually brightly colored fiberglass or wood was noted for its "witty, Pop-Art look".

Tim Scott is a British sculptor known for his abstract sculptures made from transparent acrylic and steel. While studying architecture, Scott also studied sculpture part-time at Saint Martin's School of Art with Sir Anthony Caro, where he also later taught. Inspired by the example of David Smith, Scott began to make sculptures using materials such as fibreglass, glass, metal, and acrylic sheets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minimalism (visual arts)</span> Visual arts movement

Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts. As a specific movement in the arts it is identified with developments in post–World War II Western Art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with this movement include Ad Reinhardt, Nassos Daphnis, Tony Smith, Donald Judd, John McCracken, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Larry Bell, Anne Truitt, Yves Klein and Frank Stella. Artists themselves have sometimes reacted against the label due to the negative implication of the work being simplistic. Minimalism is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and a bridge to postminimal art practices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Modern sculpture</span>

Modern sculpture is generally considered to have begun with the work of Auguste Rodin, who is seen as the progenitor of modern sculpture. While Rodin did not set out to rebel against the past, he created a new way of building his works. He "dissolved the hard outline of contemporary Neo-Greek academicism, and thereby created a vital synthesis of opacity and transparency, volume and void". Along with a few other artists in the late 19th century who experimented with new artistic visions in sculpture like Edgar Degas and Paul Gauguin, Rodin invented a radical new approach in the creation of sculpture. Modern sculpture, along with all modern art, "arose as part of Western society's attempt to come to terms with the urban, industrial and secular society that emerged during the nineteenth century".

<i>Knife Edge Two Piece 1962–65</i> Bronze sculpture by Henry Moore

Knife Edge Two Piece 1962–65 is an abstract bronze sculpture by Henry Moore. It is one of Moore's earliest sculptures in two pieces, a mode that he started to adopt in 1959. Its form was inspired by the shape of a bone fragment. Moore created the sculpture from an edition of 10 working models in 1962; these working models are now in public collections. Moore created four full-size casts between 1962 and 1965, with one retained by him. The three casts are on public display on College Green in Westminster, London; Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver; and the garden at Kykuit, the house of the Rockefeller family in Tarrytown, New York. Moore's own cast is on display at his former studio and estate, 'Hoglands' in Perry Green, Hertfordshire in southern England. A similar work, Mirror Knife Edge 1977, is displayed at the entrance to I. M. Pei's east wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The Westminster cast was donated by Moore through the Contemporary Art Society to what he believed was the City of London, but its actual ownership was undetermined for many years. The Westminster cast subsequently fell into disrepair, and was restored in 2013 after it became part of the British Parliamentary Art Collection; it was granted a Grade II* listing in January 2016.

The Geometry of Fear was an informal group or school of young British sculptors in the years after the Second World War. The term was coined by Herbert Read in 1952 in his description of the work of the eight British artists represented in the "New Aspects of British Sculpture" exhibition at the Biennale di Venezia of 1952.

<i>Twenty Four Hours</i> (sculpture)

Twenty Four Hours is a 1960 painted steel sculpture by Sir Anthony Caro, located in Tate Britain, central London, England. It was purchased by Tate in 1975.

<i>Reclining Figure</i> (Lincoln Center) Sculpture by Henry Moore

Reclining Figure (Lincoln Center) (LH 519) is a statue by Henry Moore. The original two-part bronze statue of a human figure was commissioned for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, where it has been displayed outdoors since 1965 in a pool of water to the north of the new Metropolitan Opera House. Other copies in plaster or bronze exist, and are displayed in other cities.

Born in South Africa, Michael Edward Bolus was an artist and teacher who settled in England in 1957 and studied at St Martin's School of Art from 1958 to 1962, studying under Anthony Caro. After a brief period living in Cape Town he returned to London in 1964 to begin a teaching post at St Martin's and the Central School of Art and Design. Bolus had his first UK solo exhibition at Waddington Galleries in 1968, which has exhibited a number of his sculptures since then.

David Annesley is a British sculptor who rose to prominence in the 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Wall</span> British sculptor

Brian Wall is a British-born American sculptor now living in California. His work consists mainly of abstract welded steel constructions, and his career stretches over six decades. He has had numerous solo shows, and his sculptures reside in many private and museum collections. He was a faculty member at the Central School of Art in London, and a professor of art at the University of California, Berkeley.

Douglas Bentham has been since the late 1960s, acknowledged as one of Canada's pre-eminent producer of large-scale welded steel sculpture.

References