Sir Anthony CaroWoman Waking Up 1955

The surface of this sculpture is roughly pitted. During the 1950s there was great interest in the ‘skin’ of the sculpture. This was, in part, a reaction against the smooth finish of Henry Moore’s bronzes; Caro had worked for Moore in the early 1950s.The woman’s body seems almost to overflow the plinth, unlike the passive, contained poses of traditional nudes. This came partly from Caro’s working method: he dropped soft clay from a height and then developed the forms suggested. This meant he could make the most of both chance and the expressive potential of the clay from which the bronze is taken.