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Richard Serra in 2011

Photo:

Andreas Frossard/dpa

A crane from a Kassel construction company had to balance more than 100 tons of steel when US sculptor Richard Serra showed one of his works at Documenta in 1977.

"Serra's art gives little reason for mystical speculation; it simply wants to be seen, touched and walked in," wrote SPIEGEL at the time. The only way to understand one of his works is to “physically experience” it in its place, as the artist himself said.

According to his lawyer, Serra died on Tuesday at the age of 85 in New York State. According to consistent media reports, he died as a result of pneumonia.

Most of Serra's works, many of them based on models made in Germany, are large and weigh several tons. He has created sculptures for more than 100 public places, from Philadelphia and St. Louis to São Paulo - to Bochum and Kassel. His “monumental works have changed our perception of space and form,” wrote the renowned Guggenheim Museum in New York in a tribute.

The idea for a sea of ​​steles

However, he withdrew his design for the Holocaust memorial in Berlin due to a dispute. The basic idea with a sea of ​​steles came from him. But when his design was changed, Serra withdrew it "for private and artistic reasons."

Another sculpture in New York was dismantled after strong protests. Serra is as “steely and uncompromising as his works,” the British “Guardian” once wrote.

Serra most recently lived and worked in New York, Long Island and Nova Scotia, Canada. He was born on November 2, 1938 in San Francisco. His father worked in a shipyard for several years - where his son's love of steel structures, which had already been sparked by watching the ships through his childhood bedroom window, was further fostered. “It was a lively environment,” the artist once recalled. "I grew up poor, but the atmosphere was rich."

Serra studied English literature at the University of California at Santa Barbara and at the elite Yale University. He then went to New York, where he met other artists such as Donald Judd, Dan Flavin and Jasper Johns and soon began experimenting with lead and steel.

Serra's sculptures became larger and heavier, and eventually the steel began to curve. With great effect, as Serra later recounted: “People reacted to the curves in a way they had never before reacted to corners and straight lines. They had never seen that before. People were ready for the curves.« As a result, more and more galleries and renowned museums cleared huge spaces for Serra.

The artist painted every now and then, but even then he mostly stayed monochrome. "I'm working on a pink painting," Serra once told the New York Times. »It's in my closet. Or green and purple. For a week I was also considering a light yellow-green. Was he serious? You never really knew that at Serra.

vet/dpa