The sculptor Richard Serra to hold a meeting with artists in LABoral

PRES RELEASE October 08, 2010
The sculptor Richard Serra to hold a meeting with
artists in LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación
Industrial
The winner of the 2010 Príncipe de Asturias de las Artes
award will give a lecture entitled “La piel de los espacios” on
Thursday October 21 at 6:30 PM.
The sculptor Richard Serra, awarded the Premio Príncipe de Asturias de
las Artes in 2010, will hold a meeting with artists in LABoral on Thursday,
October 21.
Considered to be one of the most important vanguard artists of the second
half of the 20th century for his innovative vision that integrates urban
spaces through works of art that provoke reflection, Richard Serra will
meet with a group of artists and will give a lecture entitled “La piel de los
espacios. Una conversación con Richard Serra.” The event will be
presented by Rosina Gómez-Baeza, Director of LABoral Centro de Arte y
Creación Industrial. The meeting will take place at 6:30 PM on October 21
in the art centre and is organised conjointly by La Fundación Príncipe de
Asturias and LABoral.
Richard Serra, son of a Spanish father, was born in San Francisco (USA)
in 1939. He studied at the University of California-Berkeley where he
completed studies in Science and English Literature in 1961 and in Yale,
where he continued his artistic studies until 1964. In the middle of the
1960s he continued his studies in Paris and Florence. He held his first solo
exhibition entitled Live Animal Habitat in the gallery La Salita in Rome.
In 1967 he began to exhibit his work in New York with the collaboration of
the gallery owner Leo Castelli. Since then, Serra has exhibited his work in
the most important museums in Europe, America and Asia, as well
forming part of some of the world’s most important public and private
collections.
Author of minimalist works and large scale sculptures designed for
specific locations, he uses industrial materials such as lead, steel and
concrete. His first works – amongst which can be found Belts, on exhibit
in the Guggenheim museum in New York – consist in a series of creations
made with neon and rubber. From 1968 to 1969 he created nearly one
hundred lead sculptures, the most memorable of them being Splashing, a
work made by hurling melted lead against a wall and floor, causing it to
splatter before hardening. In 1981 he created one of his most spectacular
sculptures, Tilted Arc, for the Federal Plaza in New York and in 1990 he
1
LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial
Los Prados, 121. 33394 Gijón - Asturias. T. +34 985 185 577. F. +34 985 337 355
info@laboralcentrodearte.org. www.laboralcentrodearte.org
installed Afangar in Iceland.
His work in on exhibition in Spain in The Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid
and in the Contemporary Art Museum of Barcelona. In addition, the
Guggenheim Bilbao features a work of art that the artist himself describes
as the most important of his career: The matter of time. Despite
considering himself to be principally a sculptor, his extensive artistic
production also includes other disciplines, such as graphic and filmic art.
At the end of the 60s he carried out a series of films, amongst which can
be mentioned Hand Catching Lead and Hands Tied, both from 1968,
which deal with the repeated and systematic execution of simple tasks.
Named Doctor honoris causa by the universities of Yale, London and La
Pública de Navarra, amongst others, he is Knight (1985) and Commander
(2008) of the Order of the Arts and Letters in France. In 2008, he was
bestowed the recently created Orden de las Artes y las Letras de España,
granted by the Ministry of Culture. Member of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, amongst other distinctions, he has received the
Emperor’s Ring from the German city of Goslar and the Praemium
Imperiale for sculpture by Japan in 1994.
2
LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial
Los Prados, 121. 33394 Gijón - Asturias. T. +34 985 185 577. F. +34 985 337 355
info@laboralcentrodearte.org. www.laboralcentrodearte.org