Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle, 18 July – 1 November 2015
For the late Anthony Caro RA, sculpture was a chance to “make something that was as important in a room as a person.” A sense of presence was central to Caro’s work in the 1960s, when he developed what was a new sculptural technique of welding together steel parts in abstract forms and painting them in bright colours.

This summer, to celebrate the career of one of Britain’s most influential sculptors, the Hepworth in Wakefield will be teaming up with three of Yorkshire’s leading arts organisations. The Hepworth joins the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Leeds Art Gallery and the Henry Moore Institute to make up the “Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle” (which may sound like a square, but two venues are very close together). The four sites showcase his work in the most extensive Caro survey in the UK to date, ranging from the early large-scale steel structures to the last sculptures he was working on before his death in 2013 (such as Terminus, below), many of which are on display for the first time in Britain.

Towner, Eastbourne, 18 July – 27 September 2015
Fife-born William Gear RA was one of only a few British painters of the post-war era to make a name overseas. During his time in Paris towards the end of the 1940s, Gear joined the avant-garde movement CoBrA, embracing a strong abstract style characterised by powerful colour and black outlines. The acclaimed collection of abstract art at Towner owes much to Gear’s tenure as curator from 1958 to 1964 and now, to celebrate a centenary since his birth, the gallery will dedicate a major exhibition to around 80 works charting the artist’s oeuvre.

Whitechapel Gallery, London, 15 July – 6 September 2015
Every three years the Whitechapel Gallery presents some of the most exciting work being produced across Britain’s capital city, in the London Open. Covering a diverse range of medium and practices, from sculpture and painting to performance and photography, this show caters for every type of contemporary art enthusiast. Highlights this year are an ice-sculpture by Sam Curtis, as well as new work by Rebecca Ackroyd, a recent graduate of the RA Schools whose large-scale sculptures and installations explore concepts of space.

White Cube Bermondsey, London, 16 July – 13 September 2015
Marc Quinn has gained acclaim for visually witty works ranging from a blood-filled head to a gold sculpture of Kate Moss in a contorted yoga position. For the past two years, however, Quinn has been compiling a portfolio of seascapes in response to global warming. In his first exhibition at White Cube since 2010, Quinn presents a series of these canvases mounted on aluminium, entitled Toxic Sublime, which have been sanded, spray-painted and even imprinted with drain covers from London’s streets. These will go alongside meditative stainless steel waves and seashells that appear as fossils, frozen in time.

University Gallery & Baring Wing, Northumbria, 18 July – 11 September 2015
The artistic rivalry and friendship of the two titans of modern art, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, is recognised in two new exhibitions running in tandem at Northumbria University’s gallery. The first show features Matisse’s much-loved cut-outs, his technique of “carving into colour” with scissors that drew crowds of interest to a landmark show at Tate Modern last year, while the second offers a selection of Picasso’s late prints from a prolific body of etchings, lithographs and linocuts, many of which will be for sale.