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Richard Serra Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts 2010
Statement by Richard Serra, after being bestowed with the 2010 Prince of Asturias Award for the Art:
“I am very honored to be the recipient of the Prince of Asturias Award. The award is particularly meaningful to me in that the country of Spain has offered me many great opportunities to realize my work for over three decades”.
Richard Serra
New York, 12th May 2010
Statement by Norman Foster, after being bestowed the 2010 Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts on Richard Serra:
“Richard Serra is the greatest sculptor alive. He is a master. I admire Richard and I live with his work. I do thank the Jury for its choice”.
Norman Foster
2009 Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts Laureate
London, 12th May 2010
Statement by Manuel Borja-Villel, director of the Reina Sofía National Museum, and Art Centre on the conferral of the 2010 Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts to Richard Serra:
“At a time when we are still questioning what Art is and what it is not, the figure of Richard Serra appears indispensable, as his work has contributed to radically transforming our aesthetic paradigms. When at the end of the fifties and beginning of the sixties artistic practices were still debating between formal autonomy and political commitment, Serra knew how to understand and redefine the work of art as work in the expanded field. Sculpture thus no longer referred to the notion of the characteristic monument of the 19th century, or to the formal spatial games and typical volumes of the first half of the 20th century. On the contrary, it supposed the transformation of our perception of what can be sensed, of our notion of space and of our place within it. The public space is not a given, pre-existing, neutral element for Richard Serra, but rather something which is constructed and modified and in which we are not a passive element, but active subjects. For Serra, sculpture is not an object, but an interweaving of relationships between the viewer, the space and the alterations generated by the artist’s intervention. Unique and brilliant, we can say that Serra makes us recognise the world in which we live, but always as if it were different”.
Manuel Borja-Villel, Director of the Reina Sofía Museum
Madrid, 12th May 2010
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