American artist Richard Serra, whose enormous steel sculptures coated with a fine patina of rust decorated landscapes and dominated oversized galleries in the world's finest museums, died on Tuesday, the New York Times reported. He was 85.

The artist died at his home on New York's Long Island of pneumonia, the Times reported, citing his lawyer, John Silberman.

Born in San Francisco in 1938 to a Spanish father and Russian mother, Serra grew up visiting marine shipyards where his father worked and also labored in steel mills to support himself in his youth, according to his San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum biographies.

Despite the large scale of his works, artistically he was considered a minimalist, letting the dimensions of his art relative to the viewer, rather than elaborate imagery, make its point.

After studying at the University of California, Berkeley, and Yale University, he moved to New York in 1966 where he began making art from industrial materials such as metal, fiberglass and rubber.