Its gigantic steel plates won over critics and the public alike. Richard Serra, one of the greatest living sculptors, died Tuesday, March 26, at his home in Orient, New York. The American visual artist was 85 years old. According to his lawyer, John Silberman, cited by the New York Times, his death was due to pneumonia.
Parisians remember the Monumenta which was dedicated to him at the Grand Palais in 2008, the large glass roof showing the excess of his works. The 2000s were also those of consecration for the artist who was crowned by a retrospective organized at the MoMa in New York in 2007 and by a permanent installation at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (Spain), since 2005.
The artist was born in 1938 in San Francisco (California), to a father of Spanish origin, a welder in the city’s shipyard, and a mother of Jewish origin from Odessa, Ukraine.
As a teenager, Richard Serra worked in steel mills during the summer, and revealed himself through his drawing talents. After studying at the Yale University School of Arts, in Connecticut, he spent two years in Europe, where his fascination with Brancusi, and his Parisian studio, made him switch to sculpture in the 1960s. Then he devoted himself to working with steel plates in the 1970s, following a stay in Japan.
