Richard Serra (November 2, 1938 – March 26, 2024) was an American artist known for his large-scale abstract sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings, and whose work has been primarily associated with postminimalism. Described as "one of his era's greatest sculptors", Serra became notable for emphasizing the material qualities of his works and exploration of the relationship between the viewer, the work, and the site.
Serra pursued English literature at the University of California, Berkeley, before shifting to visual art. He graduated with a B.A. in English literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1961, where he met influential muralists Rico Lebrun and Howard Warshaw. Supporting himself by working in steel mills, Serra's early exposure to industrial materials influenced his artistic trajectory. He continued his education at Yale University, earning a B.A. in art history and an M.F.A. degree in 1964. While in Paris on a Yale fellowship in 1964, he befriended composer Philip Glass and explored Constantin Brâncuși's studio, both of which had a strong influence on his work. His time in Europe also catalyzed his subsequent shift from painting to sculpture.
From the mid-1960s onward, particularly after his move to New York City in 1966, Serra worked to radicalize and extend the definition of sculpture beginning with his early experiments with rubber, neon, and lead, to his large-scale steel works. His early works in New York, such as To Lift from 1967 and Thirty-Five Feet of Lead Rolled Up from 1968, reflected his fascination with industrial materials and the physical properties of his chosen mediums. His large-scale works, both in urban and natural landscapes, have reshaped public interactions with art and, at times, were also a source of controversy, such as that caused by his Tilted Arc in Manhattan, New York in 1981. Serra was married to artist Nancy Graves between 1965 and 1970, and Clara Weyergraf between 1981 and his death in 2024.
Serra was born in San Francisco on November 2, 1938, to Tony and Gladys Serra – the second of three sons. His father was Spanish from Mallorca and his mother Gladys (nee Fineberg) was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants from Odessa, USSR. From a young age, he was encouraged to draw by his mother and he carried a small notebook for his sketches. His mother would introduce her son as "Richard the artist." His father worked as a pipe fitter for a shipyard near San Francisco.
Serra recounted a memory of a visit to the shipyard to see a boat launch when he was four years old. He watched as the ship transformed from an enormous weight to a buoyant, floating structure and noted, "All the raw material that I needed is contained in the reserve of this memory." Serra's father, who was related to the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, later worked as a candy plant foreman.
Richard Serra studied English literature at the University of California, Berkeley in 1957 before transferring to the University of California, Santa Barbara and graduating in 1961 with a BA in English Literature. In Santa Barbara, Serra met the muralists, Rico Lebrun and Howard Warshaw. Both were in the Art Department and took Serra under their wing. During this period, Serra worked in steel mills to earn a living, as he did at various times from ages 16–25.
Serra studied painting at Yale University and graduated with both a BA in art history and an MFA degree in 1964. Fellow Yale alumni contemporaneous to Serra include Chuck Close, Rackstraw Downs, Nancy Graves, Brice Marden, and Robert Mangold. At Yale Serra met visiting artists from the New York School including Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, and Frank Stella. Serra taught a color theory course during his last year at Yale and after graduating was asked to help proof Josef Albers's notable color theory book Interaction of Color.
In 1964, Serra was awarded a one-year traveling fellowship from Yale and went to Paris where he met the composer Philip Glass who became a collaborator and long-time friend. In Paris, Serra spent time sketching in Constantin Brâncuși's studio, partially reconstructed inside the Musée national d'Art moderne on the Avenue du Président Wilson, allowing Serra to study Brâncuși's work, later drawing his own sculptural conclusions. An exact replica of Brâncuși's studio is now located opposite the Centre Pompidou. Serra spent 1965 in Florence, Italy on a Fulbright Grant. In 1966 while still in Italy, Serra made a trip to the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain and saw Diego Velázquez's painting Las Meninas. The artist realized he would not surpass the skill of that painting and decided to move away from painting.
While still in Europe, Serra began experimenting with nontraditional sculptural material. He had his first one-person exhibition "Animal Habitats" at Galleria Salita, Rome. Exhibited there were assemblages made with live and stuffed animals which would later be referenced as early work from the Arte Povera movement.
Serra returned from Europe moving to New York City in 1966. He continued his constructions using experimental materials including rubber, latex, fiberglass, neon, and lead. His Belt Pieces were made with strips of rubber and hung on the wall using gravity as a forming device. Serra combined neon with continuous strips of rubber in his sculpture Belts (1966–67) referencing the serial abstraction in Jackson Pollock's Mural (1963.) Around that time Serra wrote Verb List (1967) a list of transitive verbs (i.e. cast, roll, tear, prop, etc.) which he used as directives for his sculptures. To Lift (1967), and Thirty-Five Feet of Lead Rolled Up (1968), Splash Piece (1968), and Casting (1969), were some of the action-based works with origins in the verb list. Serra used lead in many of his constructs because of its adaptability. Lead is malleable enough to be rolled, folded, ripped, and melted. With To Lift (1967) Serra lifted a 10-foot (3 m) sheet of rubber off the ground making a free-standing form; with Thirty-five Feet of Lead Rolled Up (1968), Serra, with the help of Philip Glass, unrolled and rolled a sheet of lead as tightly as they could.
In 1968 Serra was included in the group exhibition "Nine at Castelli" at Castelli Warehouse in New York where he showed Prop (1968), Scatter Piece (1968), and made Splashing (1968) by throwing molten lead against the angle of the floor and wall. In 1969 his piece Casting was included in the exhibition Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials at the Whitney Museum of American Art in . In Casting the artist again threw molten lead against the angle of the floor and wall. He then pulled the casting made from the hardened lead away from the wall and repeated the action of splashing and casting creating a series of free-standing forms.
"To prop" is another transitive verb from Serra's "Verb List" utilized by the artist for a series of assemblages of lead plates and poles dependent on leaning and gravity as a force to stay upright. His early Prop Pieces like Prop (1968) relied mainly on the wall as a support. Serra wanted to move away from the wall to remove what he thought was a pictorial convention. In 1969 he propped four lead plates up on the floor like a house of cards. The sculpture One Ton Prop: House of Cards (1969) weighed 1 ton and the four plates were self-supporting.
Another pivotal moment for Serra occurred in 1969 when he was commissioned by the artist Jasper Johns to make a Splash Piece in Johns's studio. While Serra heated the lead plates to splash against the wall, he took one of the larger plates and set it in the corner where it stood on its own. Serra's break into space followed shortly after with the sculpture Strike: To Roberta and Rudy (1969–71). Serra wedged an 8 by 24-foot (2.4 × 7.3 m) plate of steel into a corner and divided the room into two equal spaces. The work invited the viewer to walk around the sculpture, shifting the viewer's perception of the room as they walked.