Richard Serra

Richard Serra was born in San Francisco in 1939. Between 1957 and 1961, he studied English literature at the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Barbara. During this time he worked in steel mills to support himself. Serra attended Yale University from 1961 to 1964, where he worked with Josef Albers on the latter's book Interaction of Color. During the late 1960s, Serra traveled in Europe and met a wide range of artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, Eva Hesse, and Robert Smithson. He began to explore the specific properties of a given medium--most often cast, rolled, or molten lead, but also rubber latex--and the relationship between the chosen medium and a specific site. In these early works, Serra was particularly interested in the process of making art, an issue that would become less important in pieces such as To Dickie and Tina (1969; collection of the artist), in which he explored the physical space and weight of his sculpture by balancing large sheets of lead against one another. In the early 1970s, most of Serra's works were fabricated out of hot-rolled or Cor-Ten steel, and he began to create monumental public projects, such as Sight Point (1971-75; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam). The installation of one such monument, Tilted Arch (1981; Federal Plaza, New York), generated protracted public controversy about the merit of the work and its relationship to the plaza, and led ultimately its removal and destruction. Throughout his career, Serra's work has been championed by supporters as elegant and profound in its material and formal qualities, while his detractors have found the work aggressive and unappealing. Regardless, Serra's sculpture has been extremely influential for other artists and has played a key role in the debate over the purposes of public art, both in the United States and in Europe.