Richard Serra

Richard Serra was born in 1939 in San Francisco, California, USA. From 1957 to 1961 he studied English literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He then studied art at Yale University, New Haven, where he was an assistant to Josef Albers, graduating with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA). He participated four times in the documenta, Kassel (1972 ,1977, 1982, 1987). Serra is one of the most important American sculptors since the 1960s and has received numerous awards, including the Goslar Kaiserring in 1981 and the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Prize of the City of Duisburg in 1991. In 2010, he received the Prince of Asturias Award in the field of art. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and since 2012, the American Philosophical Society. Richard Serra lived in New York, where he died in 2024.

In the 1960s, under the influence of Minimalism, Serra, like many other artists at the time, began experimenting with unconventional, industrial materials including rubber and various metals until steel became his preferred material. He created large sculptures, some of which could be walked on, in outdoor and indoor spaces around the world, which impressed with their balance of overwhelming size, mass and weight and simplicity of the steel plates used, were incomparable and became his trademark.

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