He is a major figure in contemporary art who has passed away.
American artist Richard Serra died on Tuesday March 26 at the age of 85.
He died at his home in New York state following pneumonia, according to the New York Times.
Exhibited from major American museums to the desert of Qatar, Richard Serra has delivered massive, rounded works, yet minimalist in appearance, pushing reflection on space and the environment.
Born in San Francisco to a mother of Russian Jewish origin and a Spanish father, he trained in Paris then settled in the 1960s in New York in full artistic ferment.
He set up a furniture removal business there to survive, and notably employed the composer Philip Glass, who would become his assistant.
Read alsoParis: the Mona Lisa wins the prize for “the most disappointing masterpiece in the world”
At the end of this decade, he published a manifesto then revealed a founding work, “One ton prop (House of cards)”, four lead plates measuring 122 x 122 cm, held in balance by their own weight, in the manner of 'a house of cards.
Richard Serra... "One Ton Prop (House of Cards)".
1969 pic.twitter.com/ki732FCRx1
— Angel Muñiz (@areasvellas) February 23, 2016
A work withdrawn following a controversy
From the following decade, Richard Serra favored open-air installations and Corten steel, a choice of material that owed nothing to chance.
He knows its characteristics and potential perfectly, having worked in a steelworks every summer since he was 16.
His interest in this material comes as much from its raw appearance as from the relationships of movement, balance and imbalance that it inspires.
He then created large plates of orange-brown steel, as if rusty, exhibited in New York, Washington, Bilbao, and even Paris.
In 1981, his work "Tilted Arc", a gigantic metal plaque 3.6 m high and 36.6 m long installed across New York's Federal Plaza, had to be dismantled.
The work located on the business premises bothered local residents so much that it was removed eight years after its installation, following numerous protests from local residents and a long legal battle.
RIP Richard Serra.
His 'Tilted Arc' was a fantastic piece of subversion, totally disruptive art, installed in Foley Federal Plaza in Manhattan from 1981 to 1989. It challenged the 'desire line' forcing people to walk around it.
After complaints and petitions, Tilted Arc was removed.
pic.twitter.com/lTZGOEhNQT
— Ben McKnight (@benmcknight61) March 27, 2024
In 2014, he even planted dark towers in the sand of Qatar, so far away that you need a 4 x 4 and a good map to get there, 70 km from the capital, Doha.
“When you see my pieces, you don’t remember an object.
We remember an experience, a passage,” he said in 2004.