Serra, Richard

Serra, Richard,

1939–, American sculptor, b. San Francisco; grad. Univ. of California, Santa Barbara (B.A., 1961), Yale (B.F.A., M.F.A., 1974). Many of his early works (1960s) are cast in rubber or lead. Later, using metals, concrete, fiberglass, and other materials, he created large-scale abstract sculptures that were usually intended for specific outdoor sites. His Tilted Arc (1981) achieved notoriety when nearby office workers demanded its removal from a site in lower Manhattan. Perceived as menacing, the elegant 120-ft (37-m) curving sheet of rusting steel was dismantled in 1989. In the ensuing years Serra's huge, curved, torqued, space-enclosing, and space-defining steel sculptures, best experienced not by simply looking at them, but by wandering through and around them, have become extremely popular and are widely thought to be among the most significant abstract sculptures of the late 20th and early 21st cent. His pieces are included in many major museum collections; an eight-part, more than 430-ft-long (131-m) assemblage of his massive, rust-patinated steel sculpture was permanently installed (2005) at the Guggenheim Museum's Bilbao branch.

Bibliography

See Richard Serra: Writings/Interviews (1994); C. Weyergraf-Serra and M. Buskirk, ed., The Destruction of Tilted Arc: Documents (1991); K. McShine et al., Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years (2007); studies by R. Krauss (1986) and H. Foster, ed. (2000).

Serra, Richard (Anthony)

(1939– ) sculptor; born in San Francisco. He worked in a steel plant during his schooling at the University of California, studied with Josef Albers at Yale (M.F.A. 1964), traveled in Italy (1964–65), and settled in New York City. He is known for his gravity series, such as Belts (1966–67), and his large metal plate works, as in House of Cards (1969). His minimalist approach to sculpture has not appealed to some viewers, and one of his works, Tilted Arc (1981), installed on the plaza of the Jacob Javits Federal Building in New York City, was ordered removed (1985) because of adverse public reactions.