Richard Serra, whose towering steel structures paved the way for the Minimalist art movement's rise, has passed away at 85.
The American sculptor's death was first reported by The New York Times after Serra's lawyer had confirmed that the artist had succumbed from his long battle with pneumonia at his home in Orient, New York.
Decades of Minimalist Colossi Art Pieces by Richard Serra
Serra's steelworks became a monumental model for the recent generation, effectively "sculpting" the new age of making art. His distinctive gigantic steel pieces were realized in a variety of shapes.
Be the artworks in spirals, cubes, or cones, Serra's pieces have equally terrified and enraptured a cavalcade of fans all over the world, from Paris museums to the Qatari desert.
His 2014 "East-West/West-East" sculpture showcased by the Qatar Museums, in particular, is a set of four 14-meter-high steel plates spaced a kilometer between one another and, in Serra's own words, is "the most fulfilling thing [he's] ever done."
The artist even added: "It's a piece that I'd really like to be seen."
Born in San Francisco in the year 1938 to a Spanish father and Russian mother, perhaps this "gigantic" undertaking of his was foreshadowed by his routine visits to the shipyard his father worked at growing up.
He also took up industrial work at the local steel mills to provide for himself while undergoing English Literature studies at the University of California. Afterward, he went and studied once more at Yale, however, that time he focused more on painting.
By 1966, Serra relocated to New York where he began working on personal art using industrial materials like metal, rubber, and fiberglass. Eventually, through working with these materials, he earned a nickname from his colleagues: the "poet of iron."
His renown quickly reached worldwide status by then and Serra became known for his steelwork colossi. He also worked with other non-traditional mediums like rubber, latex, molten lead, and even neon.
Serra's name would also be closely associated with the minimalist movement due to these works in the 1970s.
The Guggenheim Museum, whose institution houses Serra's "The Matter of Time," posted on X (formerly Twitter) its tribute to the sculptor's brilliance, writing, "We mourn the loss of Richard Serra whose monumental works reshaped our perceptions of space and form."
