As a sculptor in steel, Richard Serra has contributed to the increasingly widespread use of 'industrial' metals and techniques in art over the past 50 years, together with a number of other artists active throughout the 20th century…
Richard Serra, Circuit. Laminated steel. Each plate : 2,4m x 7,3m x 2,5cm. Installation for Documenta 5, Kassel, 1972
Sculpture was the field of wide-ranging artistic experimentation over the course of the 20th century. New materials appeared alongside the traditional wood, stone and bronze. Artists such as Carl André (born in 1935), Alexander Calder (1898-1976), Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002), Julio González (1876-1942), Pablo Picasso (1891-1973), David Smith (1906-1965), Anthony Caro (born in 1924), Bernar Venet (born in 1941) and Richard Serra (born in 1939) gave expressive form to their new approaches to the art of sculpture, working in metals such as iron, steel and lead.
With a few rare exceptions, bronze had been the metal used most frequently by sculptors from ancient Greek times to the beginning of the 20th century. Sculptures were often produced and cast in series, based on original models worked by the artist in clay or plaster. The Age of Bronze, by Rodin (1840-1917), cast from a plaster figure modelled by the artist in 1875, is just one example. Of course, bronze remains in wide use for sculpture today, but over the course of the 20th century, sculptors made increasing use of other metals such as iron and steel. The new technique of assemblage was added to the traditional methods of carving and modelling, enabling sculptors to incorporate sheet metal and wire into their works, as seen first in Picasso's Guitar of 1912.
Iron sculpture was truly born somewhat later, in 1928, when Picasso – then a close associate of the Surrealists – met the Catalan sculptor Julio Gonzalez, a trained metalworker who introduced him to the art of soldering. This technique enabled Picasso to 'draw in space', as seen in Figure, design for a monument to Apollinaire, created by Picasso with help from Gonzalez in 1928. The body's volumes are rendered by surfaces and partitions that inhabit and define the sculpture's space, fixed by means by of thin metal rods.
Motivated by the same desire to create new forms of 'air-borne' sculpture, the American Alexander Calder created humorous, mobile figures made from iron wire, beginning in 1926 during a visit to Paris. His first work was a miniature circus. Subsequent explorations led to the development of the suspended Mobiles in 1933, and later a series of large, static, brightly-coloured, poetic works known as the Stabiles.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the American David Smith discovered Picasso and Gonzalez's work in the pages of the Cahiers d’art. He began producing metal sculptures in 1933, but his work flourished particularly after the end of World War II. Series such as Agricola, made in 1951-1952 or Tanktotem in 1957, show clear traces of the techniques used for their production: the sculptures' matter is distorted by the heat of the fire, scarred with the blows of hammer on anvil. The constituent parts are bonded together by weld tacks. The success of Smith's work confirmed metal as the pre-eminent medium for sculptural experimentation, at the beginning of the 1960s.
Throughout the 1960s, steel gradually emerged as the sculptural metal of choice. The British sculptor Anthony Caro, whose work was revolutionised by his discovery of Smith's sculptures in 1959, began producing abstract assemblages of small, painted steel girders from 1960 onwards, including Sculpture Seven in 1961. The Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida created massive, highly structured geometrical forms.
Industrial manufacturing techniques were used to created monumental works capable of establishing striking visual and physical counterpoints to their architectural environment. From 1983 onwards, the French sculptor Bernar Venet explored the possibilities of line, in all its mathematical variations and physical manifestations, in gigantic steel sculptures – the Lignes indéterminées – installed on public squares and plazas.
Serra, who began his career as a sculptor in 1966, was quick to see the potential of steel as the perfect medium for his ideas: large sheets of steel could be arranged in space, with no need for intrusive soldering. Starting in 1970, he created a series of steel works including Strike: To Roberta and Rudy (1970). Steel was ideally suited to Serra's desire to work out of doors, creating works – such as Pulitzer Piece: Stepped Elevation (1970-1971 – which are experienced gradually, as the viewer moves around them. Steel has enabled Serra to work on a vast scale, with immense volumes, producing pieces which it would be impossible for the artist to handle and manipulate alone. Serra's transition from lead (used from 1968 to 1970) to steel also marks the advent of technology and the world of industrial construction in his work.
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