First-ever retrospective of Richard Serra’s drawings offers chance to see artist’s work from entirely new angle

Richard Serra's monumental-scale steel sculptures have made him a crucial figure in contemporary art, but his work also takes another striking, lesser-known form: drawing. On view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) from October 15, 2011, through January 16, 2012, in its only West Coast presentation, Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective is the first-ever critical overview of Serra's drawings, offering new insight into both the artist's practice and the possibilities of the medium.

Link to the official webpage of the exhibition.

This landmark traveling exhibition brings together roughly 70 works made over the course of some 40 years—including many of the artist's sketchbooks that have never been shown before—and will unfold chronologically, tracing Serra's ever-evolving ideas and methods since the 1970s. A major breakthrough in his career occurred in 1974 when he began making wall-size abstractions (which he calls "Installation Drawings") that radically alter the relationship between drawing and architectural space. In these and many subsequent works, Serra uses black paintstick—an oil-based crayon—to build stark, densely layered forms that impact the viewer's sense of mass and gravity, making for an experience that is as visceral as it is visual.