LONDON.- The Courtauld Gallery is delighted to announce an important gift to the collection by Britain’s foremost sculptor, Sir Anthony Caro: Table Piece CLXXXV, 1974. Ernst Vegelin, Head of The Courtauld Gallery, said, “We are extremely grateful to Anthony Caro for his generosity. This is the first major work by a living artist to enter the collection in over a generation. Developing the 20th century collections at the highest level of quality is a key objective for the Gallery and this work is a wonderful addition.”

After working initially with Henry Moore, Caro (b. 1924) established his radical reputation in the 1960s with brightly painted welded sculptures. In 1972 he spent time working with industrial materials on a large scale in Italy where he also discovered soft edge roll-end steel which contributed to a new direction in his art.
Back in England he was able to source a large quantity of this material from a factory in Consett, County Durham, that was about to be closed down. He started to produce pieces with rough cuts of rolled steel on a smaller scale, and displayed a number of works in an exhibition at Kenwood House in 1974. In these so-called table pieces, the sculptures engage dynamically with their bases. In Table Piece CLXXXV cut and roughly welded jagged layers of steel are poised on the edge of the table-top support. The heavy assemblage is given extraordinary dynamism and energy as the layers of rusted steel appear to be on the point of shearing off from their base.

Table Piece CLXXXV is now on display at The Courtauld Gallery.