Caro studied sculpture in London from 1946-52, and then served as an assistant to Henry Moore for two years. From the mid-1950s until 1979 he taught at St Martin's School of Art, with a two-year period (1963-65) at Bennington College in Vermont.A protégé of Henry Moore, Caro's work had nevertheless been primarily figurative before a visit to the United States in 1959. He was then greatly influenced by American artist David Smith, with his abstract assemblages of steel and iron. Using his own formal and structural vocabulary, Caro now began to concentrate entirely on abstract compositions.
The sculptures that he created at this time were generally of large size, linear form and open character. He often welded together assemblages of sheet metal, industrial girders, piping or pieces of steel into suggestive shapes which were then painted a uniform colour or allowed to rust naturally.
In the 1980s, Caro returned to a more traditional style, working in bronze, and in the next decade created a series of sculptures describing the Trojan Wars that combined clay, metal and wood, and were semi-figurative in character. In 1993, the Trajan Markets in Rome provided the setting for a fine retrospective exhibition. Caro was knighted in 1987.
In 1998, an exhibition at the National Gallery, London, entitled Sculpture from Painting, saw Caro move still further away from his 1960s minimalism, with sculptural interpretations of some of his favourite paintings. In 2000, Caro's work reached a far wider public with his contribution to the Millennium Bridge across the Thames, spanning the river from St Paul's to the Tate Modern at Bankside, which he devised in collaboration with architect Sir Norman Foster.
