Spring in New York is a brief and uncertain period according to the Green Michelin Guide, but the weather held for the preview of “Anthony Caro on the Roof” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 25. The five, large-scale steel sculptures are typical of his work, with characteristic use of ground plane and prefabricated steel sections.  The English sculptor, 87, spoke to press, friends and admirers, in the midst of his playfully arranged works.  “I am very thrilled”, he said, no doubt referring to how supremely suited they were to the expansive Cantor Roof Garden, framed, no less, by blossoming trees in Central Park.

The more recent Odalisque (1984) and End Up (2010) use found objects to “eliminate references and make truly abstract sculpture, composing the parts of the pieces like notes in music”, Caro once noted. Buoys, dock bollards, and shipping chains, are examples of the unwieldy scrap he used in his transmuted sculptures. The affable sculptor worked as an assistant to Henry Moore in the 1960’s and acknowledges the influence of Americans like sculptor David Smith and painter Kenneth Noland.  In 1961, he wrote that America was the catalyst that changed his work.  Sir Caro (he was knighted in 1987) works everyday, doesn’t look back and wants to keep “sculpture moving”.

It must be true, having gleefully reported that he is working on a three city block sculpture which will be installed on Park Avenue in March 2012, described as frieze-like by the Evening Standard of London.