Richard Serra. Photo courtesy of Museo Guggenheim de Bilbao

The myth of the artist Richard Serra begins in his narrative the day that, at the age of four, he was present at the launching of a vessel at the shipyard where his father was employed. With succinct, abrupt eloquence the sculptor would time and again recount the moment in which the boat, freed of the shackles that tied it to the dock, began to enter the water, wobbling, releasing huge forces but staying under control. Later he would earn some money working in naval foundries during summer breaks from his studies at the University of California, where he took up English literature from 1957 to 1961, and then at Yale, where he obtained his master’s degree in Fine Arts in 1965. These experiences kindled his liking for steel and his disapproval of ‘false’ materials like bronze or aluminum: one of the classic foundational tales that artists resort to, as we have known since the publication of the book Legend, Myth, and Magic in the Image of the Artist (1979), by Ernst Kris and Otto Lurz. Thereafter, any physical phenomenon that Serra incorporated into his sculpture was, in his own words, already “stored as raw material.”...

Arquietctura Viva 65: Richard Serra en el Guggenheim de Gehry

The Guardian: Richard Serra, uncompromising American abstract sculptor, dies aged 85