Anthony Caro was one of the most significant and revolutionary sculptors of the twentieth- and twenty-first-centuries. His work has been exhibited throughout the world, including at the 1966 Venice Biennale, the seminal 'Primary Structures' exhibition in New York of the same year, a retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, London, in 1969, and a 1975 retrospective at MoMA, New York. including at Tate Britain. Caro was awarded numerous honorary memberships and fellowships of Art Academies and Institutions around the world throughout his career. In 2000, he was installed as a member of the Order of Merit by HM The Queen.

In 1959, Caro met the influential art critic Clement Greenberg in London. During a hugely influential trip to the United States in the same year, he was introduced to the abstract artists David Smith, Kenneth Noland, Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler. Between 1963 and 1965, Caro taught in Vermont and during this period developed a close friendship with Noland and Smith, working for periods of time during his career in Noland's studio and inheriting Smith's working materials upon his death. From 1960 onwards, Caro abandoned his early figurative sculpture in favour of abstraction and sculpture in industrial metals. Throughout the 1960s, his practice evolved from large scale pieces consisting of several planes of soldered metal through to delicate pieces of joined metal strips and constructions with architectural qualities. The decade was concluded with a major retrospective at the Hayward Gallery.

Air is a striking and unusual painted steel sculpture from 1971. His work of the 1970s was defined by his visit in 1972-73 to a steel foundry in Veduggio, Italy. Air occupies a unique position in Caro's career and he himself considered the work to be highly successful, retaining it in his private collection for over thirty years. The work consists of a complex interlocking grid of different elements, including handles, grid-irons of different sizes, with varying resemblances to wire and cage bars, and small, solid planes of steel. All of these pieces were soldered with characteristically subtle joins.

The sculpture spreads across the floor, low to the ground and orientated on a horizontal plane. A gentle crescendo towards one corner means that compelling visual angles evolve, through and around the maze of steel sections. The work is monumental, covering a significant surface area while at once possessing a sense of weightlessness – hence the work’s allusive, elemental title. A minimal number of contact points with the ground ensures that the sculpture seems to graze the surface of the ground, which is prominently visible through the steel grids and handles.

By the start of the 1970s, Caro was beginning to experiment with raw and rusted steel. Like the majority of his work from the 1960s, Air is a painted work. However, unlike the gaudy red and yellow colour of those earlier pieces, Air is refined and understated. A smooth, matt metallic surface with minimal abrasions augments the delicacy of the steel bars and grids. This sense of refinement is in contrast to the monumental scale of the piece – a paradox of characteristic subtlety. Between 1970 and 1972, Caro was particularly interested in the appearance of joints and junctions in his sculptures, and works such as Behold (1971) and Hand Hold (1972) have the appearance of huge planes of metal attached through moveable hinges. In contrast, Air is a uniquely realised work, synthesising an appearance of weightless flexibility with the indomitable strength provided by industrial material and a monumental sense of scale.