Public Art, Land Art, and Environmental Art

Sign in Modify your search

Narrow Your Choices

Format

Type

Place Type

Collection

Life event

Date

Field

Medium

Era

Region/Country

  • Open Section
    • Open Section
    • Open Section
    • Open Section
    • Open Section
  • Open Section
    • Open Section
    • Open Section
    • Open Section
    • Open Section
  • Open Section
    • Open Section
    • Open Section
    • Open Section
    • Open Section
    • Open Section
    • Open Section
  • Open Section
    • Open Section
  • Open Section
    • Open Section
    • Open Section
    • Open Section
    • Open Section

Occupation

Availability

 1-20 of 294 Results  for:

  • Public Art, Land Art, and Environmental Art x
Clear all

Article

Absalon  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

Israeli, 20th century, male.

Active in France.

Born 1964, in Tel-Aviv; died 10 October 1993, in Paris.

Installation artist, environmental artist, video artist.

Absalon lived and worked in Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under Christian Boltanski.

Absalon produced maquettes for ‘Utopian’ furniture upholstered entirely and uniformly in aseptic white plastic. Totally impractical, his furniture simply represents a desire to mark a departure from everyday convention. There is a strong element of play in some of his work, as in ...

Article

Absil, Gilbert  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

French, 20th century, male.

Born 1944, in Paris.

Performance artist.

Absil works within a group, creating environments similar to those of happenings. These require the participation of spectators, as can be seen in his Promenade in Arrows, created for the Biennale des Jeunes in Paris in ...

Article

Achiam  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

Israeli, 20th century, male.

Active in France.

Born 10 February 1916, in Bet-Gan; died 16 March 2005, in Paris.

Sculptor. Public art.

Achiam studied initially at the college of agriculture in Jerusalem and was active in the Israeli resistance against the British occupying forces. He started to teach himself sculpture at the age of 24, working directly with the dark grey basalt stone readily available in the environs of Jerusalem. Achiam moved to Paris in ...

Article

Ackling, Roger  

Andrew Cross

Publication History:

Published online:
10 December 2000
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b Isleworth, Middx, 1947; d June 5, 2014).

English sculptor. A graduate of St Martin’s School of Art and a contemporary there of Richard Long and Hamish Fulton, he has often been considered in relation to British land art, but his work stands apart from that movement’s direct involvement with the landscape or with the romance of nature. It is more closely allied to the rigorous abstraction of Minimalist painters such as Alan Charlton (b 1948). Ackling’s work remained remarkably consistent from the time that he first started making art in the 1960s, particularly in its reliance on a single exacting process by which fine burn-marks are made onto small pieces of wood or cardboard by focusing the sun’s rays through a magnifying glass. This work, which is always executed outdoors, demands an intensity of concentration that borders on the ritualistic. His very early drawings included shapes reminiscent of figures or clouds, but from the early 1970s his drawings were made using only straight horizontal lines etched into the surface from left to right. Ackling always draws on found objects marked by previous use, such as cardboard from the back of a notepad or wood from a chair leg, either gathered from around the world or discovered washed ashore near his coastal home on the Norfolk coast. Since his art continued to be defined by his chosen method of mark-making, there was little overt development or stylistic evolution. Instead, it was the particular surface characteristics of chosen objects—their shape, size and surface texture—that dictated in each case the placement and banding of the scorched lines, allowing the work its own inner logic....

Article

Adams, Dennis  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

American, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 15 November 1948, in Des Moines (Iowa).

Environmental artist, video artist, installation artist.

Dennis Adams lives and works in New York and Berlin. Adams' work focuses on the relationship between architecture and images taken from political literature. He creates architectural environments that act as frameworks for text, photographs and other images. These environments, which are either temporary or permanent, are public places. The series of ...

Article

Adrian, Marc  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

French, 20th century, male.

Sculptor, creator of environments.

Kinetic Art.

Marc Adrian was part of the Kinetic Art movement, which was significant in the 1960s. He created 'environments', in which the movement of the spectator at the centre provoked, by virtue of modifications in the angle of vision, apparent shifts in the components of the whole composition. He claimed to be researching 'the optimal integration of the spectator in the genesis of the work of art'....

Article

Agid, Olivier  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

French, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 20 January 1951, in Paris.

Painter, sculptor, draughtsman, illustrator.

Agid began his studies in 1970-1971 by taking one course of teaching and research on the environment. He studied architecture between 1971 and 1976, before registering in fine arts at the Université de Paris VIII....

Article

Albrecht, Siegfried  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

German, 20th century, male.

Environmental artist.

Lumino-Kinetic Art.

From certain observations made by Goethe in his Theory of Colours, Siegfried Albrecht produced changing shadows in unexpected shades of colour by the projection of chromatic beams onto objects. The results were partly due to the phenomena of simultaneous contrasts, and partly to the intersecting of vividly coloured beams which triggered an artificial splitting of the light....

Article

Alkema, Tjeerd  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

Dutch, 20th century, male.

Active in France since 1963.

Born 1942, in Harlingen (Friesland).

Sculptor, environmental artist, draughtsman.

Tjeerd Alkema has been based in Montpellier since the 1960s. In 1970, he was one of the founder members of ABC Productions along with Jean Azémard, Alain Clément and Vincent Bioulès, the group which put on an exhibition called ...

Article

Allemand, Jean  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

French, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 21 July 1948, in Toulon.

Sculptor, environmental artist, assemblage artist.

Jean Allemand is one of the co-founders of the Space group. He has lived and worked in Paris since 1967. He creates environments by assembling geometric structures.

Allemand has participated in collective exhibitions in Paris: since ...

Article

Allen, Terry  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

American, 20th century, male.

Born 7 May 1943, in Wichita (Kansas).

Sculptor, environmental artist, performance artist, video artist.

Terry Allen studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, receiving a BFA in 1966. His work is inspired by his travels in Mexico, Thailand, China and Colorado. He has taught at California State University Fresno (...

Article

Allora & Calzadilla  

Sofia Hernández Chong Cuy

Publication History:

Published online:
02 June 2011
Collection:
Grove Art Online

American installation artists, active also in Puerto Rico. Jennifer Allora (b Philadelphia, Mar 20, 1974) graduated with a bachelor’s degree in art from the University of Richmond, Virginia (1996), and Guillermo Calzadilla (b Havana, Cuba, Jan 10, 1971) graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Escuela de Artes Plastica in San Juan, Puerto Rico (1996). Allora and Calzadilla met in Italy in 1995 during a study abroad program in Florence. They then lived together in San Juan for a year before moving to New York City where they started working collaboratively while each participated in different residency and study programs. In 1998–1999, Allora participated in the year-long Whitney Independent Study Program, while Calzadilla participated in the P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center National Studio Program.

Allora & Calzadilla’s first important international exhibition was the XXIV Bienal de São Paulo in 1998 curated by Paulo Herkenhoff, which investigated the idea of cultural cannibalism known in Brazilian literature as ...

Article

Alston, Charles  

Deborah Cullen

Publication History:

Published online:
26 May 2010
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(Henry) [Spinky]

(b Charlotte, NC, Nov 29, 1907; d April 27, 1977).

African American painter, sculptor, graphic artist, muralist and educator. In 1913, Charles Alston’s family relocated from North Carolina to New York where he attended DeWitt Clinton High School. In 1929, he attended Columbia College and then Teachers College at Columbia University, where he obtained his MFA in 1931. Alston’s art career began while he was a student, creating illustrations for Opportunity magazine and album covers for jazz musician Duke Ellington.

Alston was a groundbreaking educator and mentor. He directed the Harlem Arts Workshop and then initiated the influential space known simply as “306,” which ran from 1934 to 1938. He taught at the Works Progress Administration’s Harlem Community Art Center and was supervisor of the Harlem Hospital Center murals, leading 35 artists as the first African American project supervisor of the Federal Art Project. His two murals reveal the influence of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (1886–1957). His artwork ranged from the comic to the abstract, while often including references to African art. During World War II, he worked at the Office of War Information and Public Information, creating cartoons and posters to mobilize the black community in the war effort....

Article

Alvarez, Domingo  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

Venezuelan, 20th century, male.

Born 1935, in Santo Domingo.

Environmental artist, sculptor.

Domingo Alvarez was an architect and his sculptural work was limited to the creation of practical environments, a form of plastic expression that was characteristic of the 1960s and 1970s.

Article

Anderson, David  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

British, 19th century, male.

Active in Londonc.1880.

Painter.

David Anderson focused his work on fishermen and their environment. He exhibited two paintings at the Suffolk Street Gallery in 1880 and 1881.

Article

Arai, Tomie  

Margo Machida

Publication History:

Published online:
02 June 2011
Collection:
Grove Art Online

(b New York, Aug 16, 1949).

American printmaker and installation artist. Born and raised in New York City, Arai, a third-generation Japanese American printmaker, mixed-media artist, public artist and cultural activist, studied art at the Philadelphia College of Art and The Printmaking Workshop in New York. Since the 1970s, her diverse projects have ranged from individual works to large-scale public commissions (see Public art in the 21st century). She has designed permanent public works, including an interior mural commemorating the African burial ground in lower Manhattan and an outdoor mural for Philadelphia’s Chinatown. Other works include Wall of Respect for Women (1974), a mural on New York’s Lower East Side, which was a collaboration between Arai and women from the local community. Her art has been exhibited in such venues as the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, International Center for Photography, P.S.1 Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, all New York and the Library of Congress, Washington, DC. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Joan Mitchell Foundation....

Article

Ardagh Treasure  

Michael Ryan

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

Treasure hoard (now in Dublin, N. Mus.) discovered in 1868 within the rath (circular earthwork) called Reerasta Rath, near Ardagh in Co. Limerick, Ireland. The objects were buried slightly less than 1 m deep and partly protected by an upright stone. The hoard consists of a splendid two-handled chalice, a smaller bronze chalice, and four gilt silver brooches. The probable dates of manufacture range from the 8th century ce to perhaps the early 10th.

The silver chalice (h. 178 mm; max diam. 195 mm) has a broad, almost hemispherical bowl, a copper-alloy stem cast in three parts, and a large, sub-conical foot with a broad, flat foot-ring. A band of filigree ornaments and gem-set enamel studs girdles the bowl below the rim. Below this are two applied medallions with filigree and enamels. The strap handles spring from applied escutcheons decorated with enamel, filigree, and granulation. The stem carries superb cast gilt ...

Article

Arman  

Alfred Pacquement

Publication History:

Published online:
2003
Collection:
Grove Art Online

[Fernandez, Armand]

(b Nice, Nov 17, 1928; d New York, Oct 22, 2005).

American sculptor and collector of French birth. Arman lived in Nice until 1949, studying there at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs from 1946 and in 1947 striking up a friendship with the artist Yves Klein, with whom he was later closely associated in the Nouveau Réalisme movement. In 1949 he moved to Paris, where he studied at the Ecole du Louvre and where in an exhibition in 1954 he discovered the work of Kurt Schwitters, which led him to reject the lyrical abstraction of the period. In 1955 Arman began producing Stamps, using ink-pads in a determined critique of Art informel and Abstract Expressionism to suggest a depersonalized and mechanical version of all-over paintings. In his next series, the Gait of Objects, which he initiated in 1958, he took further his rejection of the subjectivity of the personal touch by throwing inked objects against the canvas.

Arman’s willingness to embrace chance was indicated by his decision in ...

Article

Arradon  

Publication History:

Published online:
31 October 2011
Collection:
Benezit Dictionary of Artists

French, 20th century, female.

Born 5 January 1931, in Nantes.

Environmental artist, sculptor, painter. Designs for tapestries.

Kinetic Art.

Adam Séma Group.

Arradon studied at the studio of André Lhote in Paris. From 1962 she took part in the traditional annual salons in Paris: the Salon des Indépendants, the Salon de la Jeune Peinture, at the time quite involved in representation and politics, and the Salon des Grands et Jeunes d'Aujourd'hui. In ...

Article

Art and climate change  

Julie Reiss

Publication History:

Published online:
10 September 2021
Collection:
Grove Art Online

In 1962 the American scientist Rachel Carson published the book Silent Spring, exposing the widespread toxic effects of pesticides and ushering in the environmental movement in the United States. Eight years later, in 1970, the first Earth Day was observed. It was a national call to action against air and water pollution and the destruction of nature through excessive resource extraction. This growing concern about ecological damage coincided with the rise of Earthworks, also called Land art, artistic projects deliberately scaled larger than a gallery could exhibit. The vast open lands of the American West allowed for the creation of large-scale sited projects such as Michael Heizer’s Double Negative in 1969 in Nevada and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty in 1970 in Utah. While the public initially regarded Earthworks as the art world’s participation in the environmental movement, conservation and stewardship were not the goals of these large-scale interventions, which often involved the use of bulldozers and other machinery to permanently alter the landscape. However, while not intended as ecological statements, these permanent outdoor works made from natural materials and integrated into the landscape provide a starting point for surveying artists’ response to environmental issues and the climate crisis. Increasingly there has been a rise in the visibility of global contemporary art that addresses environmental concerns as art has become a recognized vehicle for communication around global climate change and its consequences. There have been more major exhibitions of this work, for example ...