Sculptor, born in San Francisco, California, USA. He studied art at California (Berkeley) and Yale universities, then went to Paris and Florence before settling in New York City. In the late 1960s he produced a series of films, and began manufacturing austere minimalist works from sheet steel, iron, and lead. Notable are the long arcs of sheet metal which can span city squares, and the cubic structures composed of massive metal plates balanced vertically against one another. Public commissions for such works have made him a controversial but highly influential artist.
Richard Serra (born 2 November 1939) is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large scale assemblies of sheet metal.
Serra was born in San Francisco and he went on to study English literature at the University of California, Berkeley and later at the University of California, Santa Barbara between 1957 and 1961.
He is the brother of famed San Francisco trial attorney Tony Serra.
Sculpture
Serra's earliest work was abstract expressionist made from molten lead hurled in large splashes against the wall of the studio. Serra often works on site specific installations, frequently on a scale that dwarfs the observer.
Serra was one of the first artists to have a public work of art physically rejected by the public. In 1981, Serra installed Tilted Arc, a gently curved, 3.5 metre high arc of rusting mild steel in the Federal Plaza in New York City. A public hearing in 1985 voted that the work should be moved, but Serra argued the sculpture was site specific and could not be placed anywhere else.
Another famous work of Serra's is the mammoth sculpture Snake, a trio of sinuous steel sheets creating a curving path, permanently located in the largest gallery of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. In 2005, the museum mounted an exhibition of more of Serra's work. (BBC)
In spring 2005, Serra returned to San Francisco to install his first public work in that city (previous negotiations for a commission fell through) - two 50 foot steel blades in the main open space of the new University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) campus.
Video art
In Boomerang (1974), Serra taped Nancy Holt as she talks and hears her words played back to her after they have been delayed electronically.
Serra plays Hiram Abiff ("the architect") in Matthew Barney's 2002 film Cremaster 3 and is in the DVD edit called "The Order."
Trivia
Serra was one of the four performers of the rarely performed Steve Reich piece Pendulum Music on May 27th 1969 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
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