Sculptural conundrums

2012 is proving something of an annus mirabilis for Anthony Caro OM CBE RA, now 88, with no fewer than three exhibitions of his work on view around the country.  And he continues to beaver away daily in his studio in Camden Town, London, with the strength of a man much younger than himself, one who has been manhandling heavy, often intractable materials throughout the course of his creative life.

We know him best for his great steel constructions — 15 of which are currently arranged around Chatsworth’s Canal Pond in its first show dedicated to a single artist — but a few years ago I was delighted by the discovery of his intricate, poetic constructions in paper, and by the boldness of his great narrative cycle on the subject of the Creation for the Gothic church of St-Jean-Baptiste at Bourbourg in northern France.

To complement the sheer bravura of the current Chatsworth show, Caro is showing a series of almost surreal smaller works made recently in painted fibreglass at the New Art Centre, Roche Court, and — as if that were not enough — nine fascinating small bronzes from his ‘House’ series at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, pieces that effortlessly dissolve the line between engineering and architecture in their multiple allusions to both.