Land art, variously known as Earth art, environmental art, and Earthworks, is an

art movement An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific art philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined ...

that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, largely associated with

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...

and the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Art in the modern era: A guide to styles, schools, & movements. Abrams, 2002. (U.S. edition of Styles, Schools and Movements, by Amy Dempsey) but that also includes examples from many other countries. As a trend, "land art" expanded the boundaries of traditional art making in the materials used and the siting of the works. The materials used are often the materials of the Earth, including the soil, rocks, vegetation, and water found on-site, and the sites are often distant from population centers. Though sometimes fairly inaccessible, photo documentation is commonly brought back to the urban art gallery.http://www.land-arts.com
Land art. Concerns of the art movement center around rejection of the commercialization of art-making and enthusiasm with an emergent ecological movement. The beginning of the movement coincided with the popularity of the rejection of urban living and its counterpart, and an enthusiasm for that which is rural. Included in these inclinations were spiritual yearnings concerning the planet

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

as home to humanity.

Form

Eberhard Bosslet Intervention Begleiterscheinung XI Era Lanzarote 2008

The art form gained traction in the 1960s and 1970s as land art was not something that could easily be turned into a commodity, unlike the "mass produced cultural debris" of the time. During this period, proponents of land art rejected the

museum A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or Preservation (library and archive), preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private colle ...

or gallery as the setting of artistic activity and developed monumental landscape projects which were beyond the reach of traditional transportable

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

and the commercial art market, although photographic documentation was often presented in normal gallery spaces. Land art was inspired by

minimal art Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or conc ...

and conceptual art but also by modern movements such as

De Stijl De Stijl (, ; 'The Style') was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 by a group of artists and architects based in Leiden (Theo van Doesburg, Jacobus Oud, J.J.P. Oud), Voorburg (Vilmos Huszár, Jan Wils) and Laren, North Holland, Laren (Piet Mo ...

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement which began in Paris. It revolutionized painting and the visual arts, and sparked artistic innovations in music, ballet, literature, and architecture. Cubist subjects are analyzed, broke ...

minimalism In visual arts, music, and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in the post-war era in western art. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction to abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary post-mi ...

and the work of

Constantin Brâncuși Constantin Brâncuși (; February 19, 1876 – March 16, 1957) was a Romanian sculptor, painter, and photographer who made his career in France. Considered one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th century and a pioneer of modernism ...

and

Joseph Beuys Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( ; ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and Aesthetics, art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism and sociology. With Heinrich Böll, , Caroline Tisdall, Rober ...

. One of the first earthworks artists was

Herbert Bayer Herbert Bayer (April 5, 1900 – September 30, 1985) was an Austrian and American graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental and interior designer, and architect. He was instrumental in the development of the ...

, who created Grass Mound in

Aspen, Colorado Aspen is the List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule city that is the county seat and the List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous municipality of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The city population ...

, in 1955. Many of the artists associated with land art had been involved with minimal art and conceptual art.

Isamu Noguchi was an American artist, furniture designer and Landscape architecture, landscape architect whose career spanned six decades from the 1920s. Known for his sculpture and public artworks, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Grah ...

's 1941 design for ''Contoured Playground'' in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

is sometimes interpreted as an important early piece of land art even though the artist himself never called his work "land art" but simply "sculpture". His influence on contemporary land art,

landscape architecture Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic design and general engineering of various structures for constructio ...

and environmental sculpture is evident in many works today.Udo Weilacher, ''Between Landscape Architecture and Land Art''. Birkhäuser, 1999, Basel Berlin Boston 1999 Alan Sonfist used an alternative approach to working with

nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

and

culture Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...

by bringing historical nature and

sustainable art Sustainability is a social goal for people to co-exist on Earth over a long period of time. Definitions of this term are disputed and have varied with literature, context, and time. Sustainability usually has three dimensions (or pillars): env ...

back into New York City. His most inspirational work is ''Time Landscape'', an indigenous forest he planted in New York City. He created several other ''Time Landscapes'' around the world such as ''Circles of Time'' in

Florence, Italy Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence was a centre of medieval European t ...

documenting the historical usage of the land, and at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum outside Boston. According to critic Barbara Rose, writing in ''

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably ...

'' in 1969, he had become disillusioned with the commodification and insularity of gallery bound art. Dian Parker wrote in

ArtNet Artnet.com is an art market website. It is operated by Artnet Worldwide Corporation, which has headquarters in New York City. It is owned by Artnet AG, a German publicly-traded company based in Berlin that is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Ex ...

, "The artist’s ecological message seems more timely now than ever, noted Adam Weinberg, the director emeritus of the Whitney Museum of American Art. 'Since the ’60s, onfist hascontinued to push forward his ideas about the land, particularly urgent right now with global warming all over the world. We need solutions to climate change not only from scientists and politicians but also from artists, envisioning and realizing a greener, more primordial future.'" Parker, Dian
"Earth Art Pioneer Alan Sonfist on Galvanizing a New Generation of Land Artists." ''ArtNet''.
Retrieved 11 October 2024. In 1967, the

art critic An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogue ...

Grace Glueck writing in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' declared the first Earthwork to be done by Douglas Leichter and Richard Saba at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. The sudden appearance of land art in 1968 can be located as a response by a generation of artists mostly in their late twenties to the heightened political activism of the year and the emerging

environmental Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...

and

women's liberation The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminism, feminist intellectualism. It emerged in the late 1960s and continued till the 1980s, primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which resu ...

movements. One example of land art in the 20th century was a group exhibition called "Earthworks" created in 1968 at the Dwan Gallery in New York. In February 1969, Willoughby Sharp curated the "Earth Art" exhibition at the Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

, Ithaca, New York. The artists included were Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets,

Hans Haacke Hans Haacke (born August 12, 1936) is a German-born artist who lives and works in New York City. Haacke is considered a "leading exponent" of institutional critique, and is considered to be the most harsh and consistent critic of museums among t ...

Michael Heizer Michael Heizer (born 1944) is an American land artist specializing in large-scale and site-specific sculptures. Working largely outside the confines of the traditional art spaces of galleries and museums, Heizer has redefined sculpture in term ...

, Neil Jenney, Richard Long,

David Medalla David Cortez Medalla (23 March 1942 – 28 December 2020) was a Filipino international artist and political activist. His work ranged from sculpture and kinetic art to painting, installation, and performance art. Early life David Cortez Me ...

, Robert Morris,

Dennis Oppenheim Dennis Oppenheim (September 6, 1938 – January 21, 2011) was an American conceptual artist, performance artist, earth artist, sculptor and photographer. Dennis Oppenheim's early artistic practice is an epistemological questioning about the na ...

Robert Smithson Robert Smithson (January 2, 1938 – July 20, 1973) was an American artist known for sculpture and land art who often used drawing and photography in relation to the spatial arts. His work has been internationally exhibited in galleries and mu ...

, and Gunther Uecker. The exhibition was directed by Thomas W. Leavitt. Gordon Matta-Clark, who lived in Ithaca at the time, was invited by Sharp to help the artists in "Earth Art" with the on-site execution of their works for the exhibition. Perhaps the best known artist who worked in this genre was

whose 1968 essay "The Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects" provided a critical framework for the movement as a reaction to the disengagement of

Modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

from social issues as represented by the critic

Clement Greenberg Clement Greenberg () (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994), occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formali ...

. His best known piece, and probably the most famous piece of all land art, is the '' Spiral Jetty'' (1970), for which Smithson arranged rock, earth and

algae Algae ( , ; : alga ) is an informal term for any organisms of a large and diverse group of photosynthesis, photosynthetic organisms that are not plants, and includes species from multiple distinct clades. Such organisms range from unicellular ...

so as to form a long (1500 ft) spiral-shape

jetty A jetty is a man-made structure that protrudes from land out into water. A jetty may serve as a breakwater (structure), breakwater, as a walkway, or both; or, in pairs, as a means of constricting a channel. The term derives from the French la ...

protruding into

Great Salt Lake The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth-largest terminal lake in the world. It lies in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah and has a substantial impact upon the local climate, partic ...

in northern

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

U.S. The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

How much of the work, if any, is visible is dependent on the fluctuating water levels. Since its creation, the work has been completely covered, and then uncovered again, by water. A steward of the artwork in conjunction with the Dia Foundation, the

Utah Museum of Fine Arts The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) is a state and university art museum located in downtown Salt Lake City on the University of Utah campus. Housed in the Marcia and John Price Museum Building near Rice-Eccles Stadium, the museum holds a permane ...

regularly curates programming around the Spiral Jetty, including a "Family Backpacks" program. Smithson's ''Gravel Mirror with Cracks and Dust'' (1968) is an example of land art existing in a gallery space rather than in the natural environment. It consists of a pile of gravel by the side of a partially mirrored gallery wall. In its simplicity of form and concentration on the materials themselves, this and other pieces of land art have an affinity with

. There is also a relationship to

Arte Povera Arte Povera (; literally "poor art") was an art movement that took place between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s in major cities throughout Italy and above all in Turin. Other cities where the movement was also important are ...

in the use of materials traditionally considered "unartistic" or "worthless". The Italian

Germano Celant Germano Celant (11 September 1940 – 29 April 2020) was an Italian art historian, critic, and curator who coined the term "Arte Povera" (poor art) in the 1967 ''Flash Art'' piece "Appunti Per Una Guerriglia" ("Notes on a guerrilla war"), which w ...

, founder of Arte Povera, was one of the first curators to promote land art. "Land artists" have tended to be American, with other prominent artists in this field being

Carl Andre Carl Andre (September 16, 1935 – January 24, 2024) was an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear and grid format sculptures. His sculptures range from large public artworks (such as ''Stone Field Sculpture'', 1977, in ...

, Alice Aycock, Walter De Maria,

Nancy Holt Nancy Holt (April 5, 1938 – February 8, 2014) was an American artist most known for her public sculpture, installation art, concrete poetry, and land art. Throughout her career, Holt also produced works in other media, including film and photog ...

, Peter Hutchinson,

Ana Mendieta Ana Mendieta (November 18, 1948 – September 8, 1985) was a Cuban-American performance artist, sculptor, painter, and video artist who is best known for her "earth-body" artwork. She is considered one of the most influential Cuban-American ar ...

, Andrew Rogers, Charles Ross, Alan Sonfist, and

James Turrell James Turrell (born May 6, 1943) is an American artist known for his work within the Light and Space movement. He is considered the "master of light" often creating art installations that mix natural light with artificial color through openings ...

. Turrell began work in 1972 on possibly the largest piece of land art thus far, reshaping the earth surrounding the extinct Roden Crater

volcano A volcano is commonly defined as a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most oft ...

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

. Perhaps the most prominent non-American land artists are the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

Chris Drury Christopher Ellis Drury (born August 20, 1976) is an American professional ice hockey executive and former player. He has served as the president and general manager for the New York Rangers since May 5, 2021. He previously served as the gene ...

Andy Goldsworthy Andy Goldsworthy (born 25 July 1956) is an English sculptor, photographer, and environmentalist who produces site-specific sculptures and land art situated in natural or urban settings. Early life Goldsworthy was born in Cheshire on 25 July ...

, Richard Long and the Australian Andrew Rogers. In 1973

Jacek Tylicki Jacek Tylicki (born 1951 in Sopot, Poland) is a Polish artist who settled in New York City in 1982. Tylicki works in the field of land art, installation art, and site-specific art. His conceptual projects often raise social and environmenta ...

begins to lay out blank canvases or paper sheets in the natural environment for the nature to create art. Some projects by the artists

Christo and Jeanne-Claude Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon (1935–2009), known as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, were artists noted for their large-scale, site-specific environmental installations, often large landmarks a ...

(who are famous for wrapping monuments, buildings and landscapes in

fabric Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, and different types of fabric. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is no ...

) have also been considered land art by some, though the artists themselves consider this incorrect.

's concept of "

social sculpture Social sculpture is a phrase used to describe an expanded concept of art that was invented by the artist and founding member of the German Green Party, Joseph Beuys. Beuys created the term "social sculpture" to embody his understanding of art's pot ...

" influenced "land art", and his * 7000 Eichen* project of 1982 to plant 7,000 Oak trees has many similarities to land art processes. Rogers' “Rhythms of Life” project is the largest contemporary land-art undertaking in the world, forming a chain of stone sculptures, or

geoglyph A geoglyph is a large design or motif – generally longer than – produced on the ground by durable elements of the landscape, such as stones, stone fragments, gravel, or earth. A positive geoglyph is formed by the arrangement and alignment ...

s, around the globe – 12 sites – in disparate exotic locations (from below sea level and up to altitudes of 4,300 m/14,107 ft). Up to three geoglyphs (ranging in size up to 40,000 sq m/430,560 sq ft) are located in each site. Land artists in America relied mostly on wealthy

patron Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows on another. In the history of art, art patronage refers to the support that princes, popes, and other wealthy and influential people ...

s and

private foundation A private foundation is a Tax exemption, tax-exempt organization that does not rely on broad public support and generally claims to serve humanitarian purposes. Unlike a Foundation (nonprofit), charitable foundation, a private foundation does no ...

s to fund their often costly projects. With the sudden economic downturn of the mid-1970s, funds from these sources largely stopped. With the death of Robert Smithson in a plane crash in 1973, the movement lost one of its most important figureheads and faded out. Charles Ross continues to work on the '' Star Axis'' project, which he began in 1971.Hass, Nancy
"What Happens When a Single Art Project Becomes a Decades-Long Obsession?,"
''The New York Times'', September 18, 2018. Retrieved January 27, 2022.Beachy-Quick, Dan
"Cosmic Dancer: Dan Beachy-Quick on Charles Ross’s Star Axis,"
''Artforum'', October 28, 2021. Retrieved June 10, 2022. Michael Heizer in 2022 completed his work on ''

City A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agree ...

'', and James Turrell continues to work on the '' Roden Crater'' project. In most respects, "land art" has become part of mainstream

public art Public art is art in any Media (arts), media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and phy ...

and in many cases the term "land art" is misused to label any kind of art in nature even though conceptually not related to the

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

works by the pioneers of land art. The Earth art of the 1960s were sometimes reminiscent of much older land works, such as

Stonehenge Stonehenge is a prehistoric Megalith, megalithic structure on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around high, wide, and weighing around 25 tons, to ...

, the

Pyramids A pyramid () is a Nonbuilding structure, structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a Pyramid (geometry), pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid ca ...

, Native American mounds, the Nazca Lines in Peru, Carnac stones, and Native American burial grounds, and often evoked the spirituality of such archeological sites.

Contemporary land artists

* Lita Albuquerque (born 1946) * Betty Beaumont (born 1946) * Milton Becerra (born 1951) * Marinus Boezem (born 1934) * Chris Booth (born 1948) * Eberhard Bosslet (born 1953) *

Alberto Burri Alberto Burri (12 March 191513 February 1995; ) was an Italian visual artist, painter, sculptor, and physician based in Città di Castello. He is associated with the matterism of the European informal art movement and described his style as ...

(1915–1995) * Mel Chin (born 1951) * Christo and Jeanne Claude Christo (1935–2020) Jeanne (1935–2009) * Walter De Maria (1935–2013) * Lucien den Arend (born 1943) *

Agnes Denes Agnes Denes (Dénes Ágnes; born 1931 in Budapest) is a Hungarian-born American conceptual artist based in New York. She is known for works in a wide range of media—from poetry and philosophical writings to extremely detailed drawings, sculpt ...

(born 1931) * Jan Dibbets (born 1941) * Harvey Fite (1903–1976) *

Barry Flanagan Barry Flanagan OBE Royal Academy, RA (11 January 1941 – 31 August 2009) was an Irish-Welsh people, Welsh sculptor. He is best known for his bronze statues of hares and other animals. Biography Barry Flanagan was born on 11 January 1941 i ...

(1941–2009) * Hamish Fulton (born 1946) *

(born 1956) *

(born 1944) * Stan Herd (born 1950) *

(1938–2014) * Peter Hutchinson (born 1930) * Junichi Kakizaki (born 1971) * Dani Karavan (1930–2021) *

Maya Lin Maya Ying Lin (Chinese: 林瓔; born October 5, 1959) is an American architect, designer and sculptor. Born in Athens, Ohio to Chinese immigrants, she attended Yale University to study architecture. In 1981, while still an undergraduate at Yal ...

(born 1959) * Richard Long (born 1945) * Robert Morris (1931–2018) *

Vik Muniz Vik Muniz (; born 1961) is a Brazilian artist and photographer. His work has been met with both commercial success and critical acclaim, and has been exhibited worldwide. In 1998, he participated in the 24th International Biennale in São Paulo, ...

(born 1961) * David Nash (born 1945) * Ugo Rondinone (born 1964) *

(1938–2011) * Georgia Papageorge (born 1941) * Beverly Pepper (1922–2020) * Tanya Preminger (born 1944) * Andrew Rogers (born 1947) * Charles Ross (born 1937) * Richard Shilling (born 1973) * Nobuo Sekine (1942–2019) *

(1938–1973) * Alan Sonfist (born 1946) * Tang Da Wu (born 1943) *

(born 1943) *

(born 1951) * Nils Udo (born 1937) * Bill Vazan (born 1933) * Strijdom van der Merwe (born 1961)

References

Notes

External links

Artist in Nature International Network

Denarend.com - About land art

Land Arts of the American West

Official UNM Land Arts of the American West Program Website

Broken Circle

OBSART , Observatoire du Land Art
*

Center for Land Use Interpretation entry for Land Art

The Case for Land Art , The Art Assignment , PBS

HENI Talks, ''What is: Land Art?''
{{Authority control 20th-century art movements Contemporary art movements Installation art

Art Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around ''works'' utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, tec ...

Environmental design

Form

Contemporary land artists

See also

References

Notes

Further reading

External links