Richard Serra (November 2, 1938 – March 26, 2024) was an American artist known for his large-scale abstract sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings, and whose work has been primarily associated with Postminimalism.

in English Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1961, where he met influential muralists Rico Lebrun and Howard Warshaw.

Supporting himself by working in steel mills, Serra's early exposure to industrial materials influenced his artistic trajectory.

While in Paris on a Yale fellowship in 1964, he befriended composer Philip Glass and explored Constantin Brâncuși's studio, both of which had a strong influence on his work.

His early works in New York, such as To Lift from 1967 and Thirty-Five Feet of Lead Rolled Up from 1968, reflected his fascination with industrial materials and the physical properties of his chosen mediums.

His large-scale works, both in urban and natural landscapes, have reshaped public interactions with art and, at times, were also a source of controversy, such as that caused by his Tilted Arc in Manhattan in 1981.

[10] He watched as the ship transformed from an enormous weight to a buoyant, floating structure and noted that: "All the raw material that I needed is contained in the reserve of this memory.

Fellow Yale alumni contemporaneous to Serra include Chuck Close, Rackstraw Downs, Nancy Graves, Brice Marden, and Robert Mangold.

[15] At Yale Serra met visiting artists from the New York School such as Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, and Frank Stella.

"[15][16] In 1964, Serra was awarded a one-year traveling fellowship from Yale and went to Paris where he met the composer Philip Glass[15] who became a collaborator and long-time friend.

In 1966 while still in Italy, Serra made a trip to the Prado Museum in Spain and saw Diego Velázquez's painting, "Las Meninas.

[19] Exhibited there were assemblages made with live and stuffed animals which would later be referenced as early work from the Arte Povera movement.

Serra combined neon with continuous strips of rubber in his sculpture Belts (1966–67) referencing the serial abstraction in Jackson Pollock's Mural (1963.)

[21] To Lift (1967), and Thirty-Five Feet of Lead Rolled Up (1968), Splash Piece (1968), and Casting (1969), were some of the action-based works with origins in the verb list.

His first outdoor sculptures, To Encircle Base Plate (Hexagram) (1970) and Sugi Tree (1970), were both installed in Ueno Park as part of the "Tokyo Biennale.

[29] Upon returning to the United States he built his first site-specific outdoor work: To Encircle Base Plate Hexagram, Right Angles Inverted (1970).

His first landscape work was made in late 1970 when Serra was commissioned by the art patrons Joseph and Emily Rauh Pulitzer to build a sculpture on their property outside St. Louis, Missouri.

[31] Shift (1970–72), Serra's second endeavor in the landscape, was built in a field owned by the collector Roger Davidson in King City, Ontario.

Among the most notable of the landscape works are Porten i Slugten (1983–86) at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark;[33] Afangar (Stations, Stops on the Road, To Stop and Look: Forward and Back, To Take It All In) (1990) on Videy Island, Iceland;[34] Schunnemunk Fork (1991) in Storm King Art Center, New York;[35] Snake Eyes and Box Cars (1993) in Sonoma County, California;[36] Te Tuhirangi Contour (2000–2) in Kaipara, New Zealand;[37] and East-West/West-East (2014) in Qatar.

The sculpture consists of nine pairs of basalt columns (a material indigenous to Iceland) and is placed along the periphery of Vesturey in the western part of the country.

(1980) at the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany; Fulcrum (1986–87), installed in Broadgate, London; Exchange (1996) outside the City of Luxembourg; or 7 (2011) on a pier in Doha, Qatar, reflect the verticality of their surrounding architecture.

It was permanently installed on a traffic island between the street car tracks in front of a train station in Bochum, Germany.

[52] In Serra's defense to preserve the sculpture he stated "To remove Tilted Arc, therefore, is to destroy it",[53] advocating an art-for art's sake mantra of site-specific artworks.

[citation needed] Following his process-based works of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Serra began to solely use rolled or forged steel in his sculpture.

Made for the plaza outside the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the sculpture weighs 70 tons.

In 1991 Serra visited Borromini's Church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome and mistook the ovals of the dome and the floor to be offset from one another.

[65][66] In 2008 Serra participated in Monumenta, an annual exhibition held in Paris's Grand Palais featuring a single artist.

[69] Four Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure (2017), consisting of four 82-ton (74 t) forged cylinders of varying dimensions is permanently installed at Glenstone in Potomac, Maryland.

[79] His early lithographs starting in 1972 include the prints Circuit; Balance; Eight by Eight; or 183rd & Webster Avenue, each titled after a sculpture created around the same time.

His print series include: Videy Afanger (1991); Hreppholer (1991); WM (1996); Rounds (1999); Venice Notebook (2001); Between the Torus and the Sphere (2006); Paths and Edges (2007); Level (2008); Junction (2010); Reversal (2015); Elevational Weight (2016); Equal (2018); and (?)