Walter De Maria (1935 to 2013) was an American artist, sculptor, illustrator and composer. He lived and worked in New York City. De Maria’s artistic practice was connected with minimal art, conceptual art, and land art of the 1960s. He realized land art projects in the deserts of the American southwest, with the aim of creating situations where the landscape and nature, light and weather would become an intense, physical and psychic experience. In his work, De Maria stressed that the work of art is intended to make the viewer think about the earth and its relationship to the universe. Lightning Field (1977) is De Maria’s best-known work. It consists of 400 stainless steel posts arranged in a calculated grid over an area of one mile by one kilometer.
