Richard Serra: Man of steel

Richard Serra was born in San Francisco on November 2, 1939, to a Spanish father and a Russian mother. He was inspired to work with raw materials from an early age: His father worked as a pipefitter at the San Francisco shipyards and Serra himself worked in a steel mill during his studies in California. These experiences had a huge impact on his later work.

Serra is mainly known for his large, minimalist steel constructions. But the artist actually started out by making smaller sculptures out of nontraditional materials, such as his work "Belts" (above), which he created in 1966 using fiberglass, rubber, and neon lights. Serra is part of an art movement in which gathering and processing art material takes precedence over the end product.

From the beginning of his career, Serra had an interest in creating self-supporting sculptures and constructions, emphasizing the weight and nature of the materials. He didn't weld or attach the pieces in many of his art works. Instead, they balance by forces of weight and gravity. Serra usually consults a structural engineer to make sure the pieces will retain their balance and stability.

In the 1970s, Serra shifted his focus to creating large-scale outdoor constructions. He was more interested in vast landscapes than urban sites and started installing his work on dead-end city streets and later in the American desert, as well. But his first large commissions mostly came from outside his home country - such as Qatar (pictured), where he also chose the desert as installation site.

Serra has exhibited his work at internationally renowned architecture festivals such as documenta and the Architecture Biennale as well as well-known museums like the Guggenheim and the Grand Palais in Paris (pictured). He was also asked to design Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, but pulled out of the project for personal reasons.

Although Serra didn't end up designing Berlin's Holocaust memorial, he has always had a particular connection with Germany. Not only are his steel pieces fabricated in Germany, many of Serra's works can be found all over the country - especially in the Ruhr region, which has many industrial sites. Pictured is Serra's work "Terminal," which is installed at the train station in the city of Bochum.

Serra's large-scale installations invite the viewer to move about and explore the sculptures. The artist's Guggenheim bio discusses Serra's monumental arcs, spirals, and ellipses as "offering an altered experience of space." One of the most renowned examples is the "Torqued Ellipse" series (pictured). The work was inspired by the lofty form of a 17th century Baroque church in Rome.

Unsurprisingly, Serra's work has also drawn controversy and criticism. When installing one piece by the artist, a laborer was crushed to death by a steel plate; another lost his leg while dismantling a sculpture. But Serra also received many awards recognizing his work as a sculptor, such as the Golden Lion at the 2001 Biennale exhibition in Venice (pictured). November 2 marks his 75th birthday.