Richard Serra
The Final Works
Cristea Roberts Gallery, London
Until 26 April 2025
Casablanca #3, 2022
Hand-applied oil stick, etching ink and silica
on Igarashi 430gsm handmade paper
Paper and Image: 167.9 x 152.9 cm - 66 1/8 x 60 1/4 inches.
Edition of 27
© Richard Serra. Courtesy of Cristea Roberts Gallery, London
Marking the first anniversary of Richard Serra’s death at the age of 85, Cristea Roberts Gallery presents the final works made by the artist.
The first complete showing of these works outside the US focuses on two series of prints made using black oil stick. Serra, one of the most significant artists of his generation, was known for monumental steel sculptures. However, his explorations of form, mass and gravity informed every aspect of his art, including his works on paper.
Casablanca 1-6, 2022 and Hitchcock I-III, 2024 mark the culmination of over fifty years of printmaking. Although described as prints, none of these works passed through a press and the methods used are unlike those of traditional printmaking; Serra’s chosen media undermines our understanding of what constitutes an editioned work.
Each work was made using oil stick, a combination of pigment, linseed oil, and melted wax. The mixture was moulded into large cylindrical sticks, then pressed down into a meat grinder and blended in an industrial dough mixer with silica.
The mixture was applied in layers, by a gloved hand, directly onto handmade paper, pushing and rubbing in a downward direction. Each layer required weeks of drying time before an additional coat could be applied. As a result, each impression varies in its construction.
For each work, layer upon layer of black oil stick was built up so that an intensely textured and rich three-dimensional surface emerges, evoking a large void. This imposing effect of black absorbing and reflecting light, dominates Serra’s prints. When making works on paper Serra remained committed to using a single palette of black to investigate weight, stability, and density.
Richard Serra commented “Black is a property, not a quality. In terms of weight, black is heavier, creates a larger volume, holds itself in a more compressed field. It is comparable to forging.”
The mass of black in each work, which almost fills the entire sheets in Casablanca and Hitchcock, is relieved by thin areas of paper that appear to rise or emerge from curved edges and corners. Serra examines tension and gravity through this unequal balance of heavy mass and handmade Japanese paper. The paper support almost appears precarious; each impression of Casablanca, measuring over 150cm in width, weighs nearly 10 kilograms.
Richard Serra was interested in how an artwork not only exists in space but reorientates it. His sculptures created environments that had to be walked through or around to be fully experienced. Serra’s printmaking extends these investigations, interrogating the physical relationship of mass and the flat surface, and the viewers relationship to it.
The exhibition also features examples of earlier uses of black oil stick and etchings by the artist dating from 2004, and a display of the tools used to create these groundbreaking works.
Richard Serra: The Final Works demonstrates how the artist’s radical techniques and exceptional approach to making editions, remains singular in the history of printmaking.
Since presenting the first exhibition in the UK devoted to Serra’s prints in 2013, Cristea Roberts Gallery has continued to exclusively exhibit the artist’s editions in Europe. The works on show were developed by Richard Serra with Gemini G.E.L., an artists’ workshop and publisher in Los Angeles, where Serra made all his editions, a collaboration that lasted for over fifty years.
RICHARD SERRA - BRIOGRAPHY
Richard Serra (1938 - 2024) was born in San Francisco, USA. He lived and worked in New York, and the North Fork of Long Island, and Nova Scotia. From 1957 to 1961 Serra studied at the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Barbara, and from 1961 to 1964 at Yale University, Connecticut, where he worked with Josef Albers on Albers seminal book, Interaction of Color (New Haven, 1963). His first solo exhibition was held at Galleria La Salita, Rome, in 1966 and the Pasadena Art Museum staged his first solo museum exhibition in 1970.
Serra’s large-scale, site-specific sculptures, featuring monumental arcs, spirals, and ellipses can be found all over the world. Selected solo exhibitions and retrospectives include Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel (2017); Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2017); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2014); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2011); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2011); Menil Collection, Houston (2011); Monumenta, Grand Palais, Paris (2008); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2008); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006); San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art (2006); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2005); Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples (2004); Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis (2003). His works are housed in major collections all over the world.
Richard Serra participated in international exhibitions including Documenta, Kassel (1972, 1977, 1982, and 1987); the Venice Biennale (1980, 1984, 2001, and 2013); and the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Annual and Biennial exhibitions (1968, 1970, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1981, 1995, and 2006).
Richard Serra was the recipient of many notable prizes and awards. In 2015, he was awarded Les Insignes de Chevalier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur, France, and in 2018 he received the J. Paul Getty Medal, which honors extraordinary contributions to the practice, understanding, and support of the arts. Prior to this he was also awarded Orden de las Artes y las Letras de España, Spain in 2008 and Orden pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste, Federal Republic of Germany in 2002.
Richard Serra passed away aged 85 on 26 March 2024 in New York, USA.
CRISTEA ROBERTS GALLERY, LONDON
43 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5JG
Related Posts:
In English
Richard Serra: Every Which Way, David Zwirner, New York, November 7 – December 14, 2024
Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April 13 – August 28, 2011
Richard Serra: Torqued Ellipses, Dia Center for the Arts, New York, September 25, 1997 - June 14, 1998
En Français
Richard Serra : Casablanca, Galerie Lelong & Co., Paris, 14 mars - 30 avril 2024
Richard Serra : Clara Clara, 1983 , Musée du Louvre, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, 14 avril – 3 novembre 2008
Richard Serra: The Final Works
Cristea Roberts Gallery, London, 13 March - 26 April 2025
