Richard Serra
Born – San Francisco, USA 1939
Richard Serra trained at the Universities of California, Berkley, Santa Monica and Yale, paid for by funds made while he was working in steel factories. He spent 1965-1966 in Europe, producing an exhibition in Rome. The abstract sculpture he was making was fashioned from unlikely materials – rubber and neon tubing. He then made the transition to molten lead as the substance of his “process art”. In 1969, lead was also the basis for Serra’s One Ton Prop (House of Cards). This is the earliest piece that is recognisable as quintessentially his. The flour plates balance precariously against one another, held in place by the force of gravity. By 1970, Serra was employing steel as his material to create so-called “anti-environments”. His sculptural pieces of “engineering” have since grown in scale and these, such as Fulcrum, the sculpture at Broadgate, London, have found their metier in public spaces. The siting and contextual specificity of Serra’s monstrous and yet graceful work has been a major preoccupation. However, his sited pieces, intended to be “a field force” by which “space us discerned physically”, have been controversial, due to popular scepticism about their safety because of their lack of conventional construction.
Masterpieces:
- Belts
- Torqued Ellipse IV
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.
Books About richard serra
Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective (Menil Collection)
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Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years
Kynaston McShine
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Richard Serra: Torqued Spirals, Toruses and Spheres
Richard Serra
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