Everything to know about Richard Serra as master of large-scale steel sculptures dies aged 85

Richard Serra, who is considered one of the greatest sculptors of his generation, died on Tuesday, March 26. Serra's lawyer John Silberman spoke to The New York Times and confirmed that he died of pneumonia at his Orient, New York home. Serra was 85 years old at the time of his death and is survived by his wife, Clara Weyergraf, an art historian.

Serra was known for his large-scale site-specific sculptures including large steel structures and is considered a post-minimalist pioneer. He also brought forth the revolutionary notion of the viewers themselves being the subjects of his work. Some of his popular work includes the Fulcrum in London, The Matter of Time in Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum, and more.

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Richard Serra and the purpose of his art

Born in San Francisco to a Spanish father who worked in a shipyard and a Russian-Jewish mother, The Guardian reported that Richard Serra drew some of his early inspiration from having seen a ship being launched in the shipyard. While later studying at the University of California in both Berkeley and Santa Barbara, Serra worked at steel mills to support himself.

He graduated from Yale University with a master's degree in Fine Arts in 1964, and this was also where he met his first wife Nancy Graves, as per The Guardian. However, the duo's marriage fell apart in the 1970s

Serra spent a lot of time in New York and worked with several unconventional materials for his splash pieces, as he threw items like molten lead into the base of walls and let it harden.

In the 1970s, his projects increased in scale and he began working on site-specific structures across the world. His work did not merely rely on pure observation but also incorporated an element of exploration and interaction between the person viewing the piece and the piece itself.

Serra believed that the viewers were the content of his work and mentioned in an interview with The Guardian in 2008:

"The whole subject-object relationship is reversed. The content is you!"

He added:

"If you don’t walk into the work and engage with it, there isn’t any content."

His site-specific work was seen across the United States, Canada, England, Qatar, and even Japan. A rather infamous yet iconic example of his work was the Tilted Arc, a 120-foot steel structure installed at the Federal Plaza in 1981, in Manhatten.

The structure was dismantled in 1985 following complaints about people having to walk around it in order to get across the Plaza.

At the time, a distraught Richard Serra tried everything to not have the structure dismantled but in vain. Serra wanted people to engage with the structure but those who worked around the area complained that it disrupted their daily routines.

Some of Richard Serra's other more well-accepted and less controversial installments include the Fulcrum, installed in 1987 at the entrance to the Liverpool Street station in London, and the Te Tuhirangi Contour in New Zealand, which joined 56 steel plates at the Gibbs Farm to form an 844-foot-long structure that resembled a rusted ribbon.

Richard Serra's Monumenta Exhibit 2008 installation at the Grand Palais in Paris showcased giant rectangles installed inside the venue bearing his signature reddish-brown rusted look. His most famous work is considered to be The Matter of Time at Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum, which was constructed with eight curved steel torqued ellipses between 1994 and 2005.

The museum shared a tribute online after the news of Serra's demise was announced and stated that his work reshaped perceptions of space and time and redefined the connection between the artwork and the viewer.

"Beyond the sheer scale and grandeur of his creations, Serra's artistic vision was rooted in a deep understanding of the relationship between art, architecture, and the environment," the tribute stated.

The same year as the installation of the Titled Arc, Richard Serra tied the knot with art historian Clara Weyergraf. He was also honored with a plethora of awards from across the world during his lifetime including a Leone d’Oro for lifetime achievement.