Background Image

Richard Serra

"I know more about weight than lightness. "

Pic

Notes of biography

The sculptor Richard Serra is born in 1939 in San Francisco. He studies primarily English literature at UC Berkeley and Santa Barbara, working alongside in a steel mill to earn a living. He studies, subsequently, Fine Arts and painting at Yale University, where he collaborates in the work of Josef Albers "Interaction of Color".
In 1965, thanks to a scholarship, he lives in Paris, where he meets Philip Glass and becomes interest in the work of Brancusi ("It was there that my switching to sculpture took place," says the artist), then Greece and Turkey. Again scholar, Richard Serra spends a year in Florence (Italy) where he discovers the Povera Arte, which influences his work.
The young artist moves to New York the following year, frequenting many artists of his generation who become salient: Carl Andre, Eva Hesse, Joan Jonas, Bruce Naumann and others. By the mid-sixties, Richard Serra regularly participates in group exhibitions, including those on American sculpture, and the first in a long list of solo exhibitions present his work in Rome in 1966. This is the beginning of a very large number of exhibitions throughout the world. The artist travels extensively to install his sculptures (USA, Spain, Israel, Japan, Greece, France, Germany, etc.). Over time, most major international museums organize events around his work. Numerous awards and honors mark his artistic career. Richard Serra receives significant public commissions (Amsterdam, New York, Paris - Square de Choisy - Berlin, Reykjavik, Basel, etc.).
From his beginnings as a sculptor, Richard Serra gives up all traditional data from sculpture; his work evolves around a slow thinking, toward minimal forms that are his trademark.
His works are staged to reveal tensions, an imbalance or potential energy. The use of the gravity of the material is a constant in the activity of Richard Serra, more particularly in the balance of steel sheets resting on the edges, either against a wall or against each other in support by their top or in other combinations. The artist exploits the latent possibilities of collapse and the resulting dangers emanating from them.
Serra's sculptures are inseparable from the place for which they are created. Richard Serra is an artist with multiple concerns, a man of excess. The artist builds a large engraved work, begun in the early 70s, using various means of graphic expression: engravings, lithographs and serigraphs.
He lives and works in New York and New Scotland.

Artists on display

The art and the artists display: proclamations, galleries, museums, personal or collective exhibitions. On walls or in shop windows, wise or rebels, posters warn, argue, show. Some were specially conceived by an artist for such or such event, other, colder, have only the letter.

Some were created in lithographic technic, most are simple offset reproductions. They are many those who like collecting these rectangles of paper, monochrome or in games of colours, in matt paper or brilliant, with many words or almost dumb.

We are happy also to be able to greet, by this pages, mythical galleries as those of Denise René, Louis Carré, Claude Bernard, Berheim Jeune, Maeght, Pierre Loeb and others.

Pic

Complete work(s)

Complete work(s)
*« L'oeuvre sculpté et dessiné », Zweite, Crimp, Bois et Ammann, Ed. Gerd Hatje Verlag, Stuttgart, 1987 *« Richard Serra. Drawings, Zeichnungen, 1969-1990 », Y.-A. Bois, Ed. H. Janssen- Benteli Verlag, Berne, 1990 All the complete works

Bibliographic track and more

To read about the artist :
  • « Richard Serra, Écrits et entretien 1970-1989 », Ed. Daniel Lelong, Paris, 1990
  • « Richard Serra », A. Pacquement, Ed. Centre G. Pompidou, Paris, 1993
  • « La Mormaire », S. Germer, Richter Verlag, Düsseldorf, 1997
  • « R. S. au Musée Guggenheim », in Connaissance des Arts, Hors série, Nov. 2006
  • « R. S. sculpture : Forty years », K. Mcshine et L. Cooke, Ed. MoMa, 2007
  • « R. Serra : Monumenta, Grand Palais », collectif, Beaux Arts Ed., 2008
  • « Richard Serra : L'origine de la gravité », D. Klébaner, Ed. Ides et Calendes, 2011
  • « Brancusi, Serra », Friedrich Teja Bach et autres, Ed. Fondation Beyeler, 2011
  • « Richard Serra 2016 », Briony Fer, Ed. Gagosian / Rizzoli, 2017
  • « Richars Serra : Drawings 2015-2017 », cat. d'expo., Rotterdam, Ed. Steidl, 2017
To read from the artist :
  • « Richard Serra : Writings, interviews », University of Chicago Press, 1994
  • « R. Serra : ma réponse à Kyôto », Fabien Faure, Fage Editions, 2008
Website :
No website dedicated to the artist.

More :


Art movements

+ MODERN SCULPTURE / 1930-1970 / William Kenneth Armiage, Constantin Brancusi, Anthony Caro, Naum Gabo, Pablo Gargallo, Isamu Noguchi, etc.
All art movements

See & discover

Beyond works currently in stock, it seemed to me useful to combine business with pleasure by letting you discover others works by artists in my gallery. These artworks, now sold or removed from our website, have been in our stock in the past.

These pages will undoubtedly make it possible for some of you to associate an image with its title or the other way round, for others it will be a good time to discover more on such and such artist. For the sake of confidentiality – the pieces being no longer available – we won't display neither their numbering or their price. For whatever reason, make sure to visit this amazing art database with to date 6441 online works just for your pleasure! Michelle Champetier

See & discover