Serra, Richard (1939– )

US sculptor. A leading exponent of minimalism, he is noted for abstract works in metal, in particular huge curving steel plates set up out of doors, as in Sight-Point (1971–75; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam).

Serra made innovative, splashed pieces of molten and rolled lead in the 1960s before graduating in the 1970s to his ingenious constructions of steel plates and rods. His works are noted for their sheer physicality and increasingly impressive size, for example his series of Torqued Ellipses (1996–99), comprising gigantic plates of towering steel, bent and curved, which carve very private spaces from the large public sites in which they have been erected. Another of Serra's public works is the 18-m/60-ft tall Charlie Brown (1999) in San Francisco, named for the Peanuts comic-strip character in honour of its author, Charles Schultz, who had died that year.