Pilar Ordovas remembers Richard Serra (1938-2024)

In 2012, my friend John Silberman asked me to help Richard Serra get an institutional venue in Europe for his latest drawings; they were smaller in scale and he felt they needed to be seen in a more intimate space.

This led to my conversations with the Courtauld Gallery and his exhibition there in 2013. Richard and his wife Clara came to London with John to look at the space for his exhibition and we had the most extraordinary morning. We first went to my gallery – I couldn’t believe they were standing here and I had the nerve to think about an exhibition sometime in the future (they say you can always hope or dream!), then we went to the Courtauld. To see Clara and Richard together looking at the space and thinking together was a revelation; they were such a creative partnership. They looked at the alcove and the possibility of showing a site-specific drawing there.

We then saw the collection and spent the morning looking at some of the Courtauld’s drawing jewels. I particularly remember Michelangelo’s late crucifixion as such a poignant drawing, but there were Seurats, Cezannes and an earlier Michelangelo. Looking at the collection with Serra was an experience I will never forget. We finished the day having lunch at Wiltons, speaking about the Picasso and De Chirico drawings he had wished he had bought and sketching them in his sketchbook while describing them to me. We talked about art, and his project in Qatar. We had such a wonderful conversation.

Clara and Richard invited me to the unveiling of West meets East/East meets West in the northwestern Qatari desert. We all walked together the kilometre between the four steel plates as the sun set: strong, monumental, rough, beautiful and timeless.

In 2021, Richard Serra gave us an exhibition of his drawings at the gallery, which was such a celebration: we had just come out of the Covid-19 pandemic and were marking ten years as a gallery. Working with him and his team was such a privilege.