Lock
- Artist: Sir Anthony Caro
- Date: 1962
- Medium: Painted steel
- Dimensions: confirmed: 845 x 3055 x 2840 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is “Lock” by Sir Anthony Caro, created in 1962 and made from painted steel. The work is a welded‑and‑bolted construction finished in a uniform dark blue that makes the metal’s joints—its rivets and ribbing—visible and plain. Caro built it of three low‑lying units that sit on the floor: two long, flat steel panels separated by an I‑beam angled between them, and a third short panel raised just above ground level like a ramp. Above these, a wide horizontal T‑bar or railing spans the entire width, pinning the whole piece down; its uprights attach to the outer edges of each panel.
Caro’s 1959 trip to America introduced him to abstract painting and sculpture, prompting his shift toward steel as an expressive medium. He began welding sheets and bars together, then applied bold flat colour finishes—this painting technique shows up again in “Lock”. While teaching at St Martin’s School of Art, he urged students to push sculpture into new territory; the piece exemplifies that ambition.
When you walk around it, you can look down from above or view it frontally. The ground‑hugging form invites a physical relationship with the viewer—something Caro emphasized in his work and in his lecture notes about “pushing sculpture where it never has been”. It is a clear instance of Caro’s new sculptural language that blends steel structure, colour, and direct interaction with space.
See it in person
Lock is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
