Clay Ellis, New Tack (foreground); mixed media 144” x !44” x 160”; Six Dropped Dallies, mixed media 102” x 98” x 134”; Photo Rob Ganzeveld

Anthony Caro’s sudden death last October, at the age of eighty-nine, ended the unbroken lineage of the “new tradition” of radically modern abstract sculpture constructed in metal that began with Pablo Picasso and Juli González in the late 1920s and continued with David Smith to Caro himself. Yet there are several generations of sculptors from all over the world who studied or were mentored by Caro or worked as his assistants. Judging by the number of them who attended his memorials at Tate Britain, in London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, some coming long distances, they continue to admire and respect both the man and his work. It’s an extraordinarily diverse list that includes, among British artists alone, such well-known figures as Phillip King, William Tucker, and Tim Scott, at one end of the aesthetic spectrum, and at the other, Gilbert and George and Richard Long, along with some very young practitioners, such as Caro’s recent studio assistants, Neil Ayling and John Wallbank, who are just beginning to attract attention. Many others from elsewhere in Europe, the United States, Canada, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Australia could be added, yet few of these artists make work that could be described as “abstract sculpture constructed in metal.” Whatever they absorbed from Caro, whatever they found stimulating