Born in San Francisco on 2 November 1939, Richard Serra studied English literature at the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Barbara (1957-61), and fine Arts at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (1961-64), where he became a teaching assistant in Josef Albers' famous colour course and helped proof the plates of Albers' book The Interaction of Color. In 1964-65 he spent a year in Paris on a Yale Travelling Fellowship, followed by a year in Florence on a Fulbright grant. He had his first exhibition at Galeria La Salita in Rome in 1966, and after travelling to Spain and North Africa, he returned to New York. Among others, friendships were formed with Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, Robert Smithson and Carl Andre. In 1968 Serra held a solo exhibition at the Rolf Ricke Gallery, Cologne, and in 1969 his lead 'Prop' sculptures were exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and in a solo exhibition at Castelli Warehouse, New York. Since 1970 he has become widely known for his large interior installations and outdoor urban and landscape works which generally employ huge steel plates. He has continued to exhibited regularly with Leo Castelli Gallery, New York. A retrospective of his drawings was held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 1977, and a retrospective of his sculpture was organised by the Kunsthalle, Tübingen, Germany, in 1978. Further major museum retrospectives have been held at the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York (1980-81), at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1983), at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1986), and at the Lenbachhaus, Munich (1988). Serra lives and works mostly in New York when not travelling to fulfil commissions for public sculptures and exhibitions.