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B. 1924
INDEX

121 by 140 by 91.5cm.; 47 1/2 by 55 by 36in.

painted steel

Executed in 1970.

PROVENANCE

David Mirvish Gallery, Toronto
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, Contemporary Art Sale, 14 November 1991, Lot 316
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

EXHIBITED

Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, Anthony Caro, 1987

LITERATURE

Dieter Blume, Anthony Caro, Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. III: Steel Sculptures 1960-1980, Cologne 1981, p. 208, no. 962, illustrated

NOTE

Building on the sculptural innovations of the pioneers of constructed sculpture, notably Picasso, Julio Gonzalez and David Smith, and inspired by the paintings of Kenneth Noland, Caro in the 1960s and 1970s launched a full-frontal assault on traditional sculpture. Rejecting figuration in general and any anthropomorphising tendency in particular, Caro, now Britain's foremost living sculptor, instead concentrated on pure, non-imitative forms, stressing the relationships between his sculptures' constituent parts.

This is particularly evident in the present work. Visually unified by its monochrome colour, Index contains within itself extraordinarily disparate and diverse elements. Various different centres of interest are presented in a wonderfully complex yet compositionally unified piece. Caro places the aesthetic stress on the relationships between the different parts, creating connections between the strong I-bars, the gentle semi-circle, and the comparatively delicate window-pane that forms the roof of the sculpture. Index becomes an extraordinarily expressionist work, achieving with steel what the New York School achieve in paint. Caro's technical skill and compositional talent come to the fore in this work: not only does he succeed in combining complex components without jeopardising the work's lyrical simplicity, but moreover he uses such solid, industrial metals with a deftness that allows the forms to flow, to be animated. Walking around this piece, with no plinth to separate us from the work, the viewer becomes aware of the evolving interplay between its component parts and is struck by the tangible sense of space created. Animated and imposing, Index is an exceptionally pure sculpture, condensing the pared-down aesthetic which Caro developed in his monumental sculptures into a fantastic, domestic-sized work.