Happy birthday to American artist Richard Serra who was born on this day in 1938. The 84 year old artist’s career has spanned decades and his art dominates entire wings of museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Richard Serra was born in San Francisco and was encouraged to draw from a young age, toting a sketchbook around and being introduced as “Richard the artist” by his mother. He received a Masters in Fine Arts in 1964 from Yale University and after spending time in Paris, Florence and Madrid studying masters such as Constantine Brancusi and Diego Velazquez, found his unique voice in sculpture.
Serra’s first one-man exhibition entitled “Animal Habitats” took place in Rome and his assemblages at the exhibition included both live and stuffed animals. The artist experimented with a number of different materials in his artworks including steel, rubber, neon, fiberglass and lead. Lead was preferred by the artist because of its malleability and ease in rolling. He has created artworks that are installed with crates, looming overhead 30 to 40 feet tall and weighing almost 70 tons. 

The artist was highly influenced by Japanese gardens spending time in Japan in 1970. He began creating site-specific outdoor sculptures which were meant to be walked-thru and related to the landscape and topography for which it was created. Serra creates an environment as opposed to a sculpture. His works envelop viewers and have carved new ground in what sculpture can, and should, be.

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