The American sculptor Richard Serraa major figure in contemporary art with his monumental works created with rusty steel plates – among them ‘The Matter of Time’ at the Guggenheim -, died this Tuesday at the age of 85, according to US media reports.
Serra died of pneumonia at his home on Long Island, New York state, according to his lawyer, John Silberman, told The New York Times.
Its surprisingly large pieces are exhibited all over the world, from the most important museums in Paris to the desert of Qatar, and sometimes his enormous, rounded works with a minimalist appearance have caused controversy due to their imposing nature.
Born in the city of San Francisco in 1939, mother of Russian Jewish origin and Spanish father, Serra obtained a scholarship in Paris and then settled in the 1960s in a New York in full artistic ferment.
At the end of that decade he published a manifesto followed by his founding work “One ton prop (House of cards)”, four 122 cm square lead plates that remain balanced with their own weight, like a house of cards.
Then move on to the large orange-brown steel plates, exhibited in New York, Washington, Bilbao and Paris.
Serra designed sculptures specifically for the spaces they were going to occupyand said that he was interested in studying the interaction of his works with the environment.
“Certain things… stick in your imagination, and you need to reconcile with them,” Serra said in an interview with host Charlie Rose in the early 2000s.
In 2014, he even planted three dark towers in the sand of Qatar, so far away that you need a 4×4 vehicle and a map to reach the site, 70 km from Doha, the capital. “When you look at my works, you don’t remember an object. What remains is an experience, a passage,” the artist said in 2004.
The sculptor also became news in 2006 when one of his works, ‘Equal’, disappeared from the Reina Sofá Museum.