Born in 1924 and knighted by the Queen of England in 1987, Anthony Caro was one of the greatest sculptors of the past half century. As a former student of Henry Moore, the artist reinvented the language of modern sculpture, experimenting with wide range of different material. His work explored the abstract to the very fullest, evolving from the unfettered freedom of radical lines in the 1960s towards variations more influenced by narrative and figurative concerns. What emerges in these works is the abstract sculptural vocabulary that brought the artist to fame. But these new works are “haunted by the figure”, in the words of American art critic Karen Wilkin.

Their verticality resolutely seeks to explore figurative or even narrative associations: “Now that making sculpture abstract is no longer a hurdle, I feel free to explore a breadth of possibilities,” says Caro in the Upright Sculptures catalogue, published in 2010. Anthony Caro creates his sculptures from cast-off objects – a drinking trough, railway sleepers, a mooring post – whose original purpose is thus forgotten. In rusted steel, cast iron and wood, compressed inside the vertical structures that give them their name, the sculptures seem to be on the point of imploding. These works reflect Anthony Caro’s quest to create sculptures “with no exterior”, where all the significance lies in the depth.