Christie’s will offer Works from the Collection of Sir Anthony Caro during Spring Marquee Week in New York, in the Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale. The selection comes from the personal collection of Anthony Caro, the British sculptor, and includes works by his friends and fellow artists Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hofmann, and others.
Caro is known for his abstract sculptures and played a significant role in the development of twentieth-century sculpture. Trained at the Royal Academy Schools in London, he began his career assisting Henry Moore in 1951. In 1959, on a Ford Foundation scholarship, Caro travelled to the United States and visited museums, galleries and art schools, meeting artists including Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, and David Smith. These encounters developed into friendships and contributed to his move away from figuration.
Kenneth Noland, a close friend, is well represented in the collection. Among the highlights is Purkinje Effect (estimate: $1,000,000 to $1,500,000), a ‘chevron’ painting from 1964, part of a series Noland produced for only three years.
The sale also includes works by Helen Frankenthaler. Her Hansel and Gretel (estimate: $700,000 to $1,000,000) exemplifies her colour-staining technique, in which pigment is sunk directly into unprimed canvas. In 1972 Frankenthaler made her first body of sculpture with Caro in London, and Caro in turn experimented with painting acrylics at her New York studio ten years later.
Select highlights will be on view in London in March, with the full selection on view at Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries ahead of the sale in May.
(Press Release)
