Artist 21: Richard Serra

Richard Serra was born in 1939 in California.  He earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature in 1961 from the University of California.  He continued his studies and earned a Masters degree from Yale University where he also trained in painting.  In 1964-1965 Serra traveled to Paris where he spent many hours drawing, the following year he went to Italy and began painting girds in random colors.  On a side trip to Spain he came to realize that he was unsatisfied with painting because of its two-dimensional limitations.  After that he began creating works using live and stuffed animals in cages.  When he returned to the United States in 1966 he settled in New York, this was when he began creating rubber sculptures.  By the 1970s Serra was creating large-scale pieces, due to his exposure to environmental art he was well aware of the idea of site-specific art, causing him to make art that became an integral part of its surrounding area.  As his works grew, Serra developed an interest in the spaces that he was creating with his art, along with the visual and physical relationship to the viewer.  Richard Serra is an American sculptor of the post abstract expressionism period.  He uses the experience of the viewer as a key element in each of his pieces.