Walter De Maria

Albany, California, 1935 - 2013, Los Angeles, California

BiographyWalter De Maria was born October 1, 1935, in Albany, California, near San Francisco. In 1957, he graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned his M.F.A. in painting two years later. De Maria and his friend, the avant-garde composer La Monte Young, participated in Happenings [more] and theatrical productions in the San Francisco area.In 1960, De Maria moved to New York; here he wrote essays on art, which were published in 1963 in Young’s An Anthology, and took part in Happenings and multimedia presentations. In 1961, he made his first wooden box sculptures. De Maria and Robert Whitman opened the 9 Great Jones Street gallery in New York in 1963; the same year, De Maria’s first solo show of sculpture was presented there. This year, he worked as a drummer for the rock group The Velvet Underground. He continued to work in wood, began his “invisible drawings,” and composed music. With the support of collector Robert C. Scull, De Maria started making pieces in metal in 1965. In 1966, he was given a solo show at Cordier & Ekstrom, New York, and participated in Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum, New York.De Maria emerged as a leader of the Earthworks movement in 1968 when he filled the Galerie Heiner Friedrich in Munich with dirt. This year, he also made his The Mile Long Drawing in the Desert in the Mojave Desert for Walls in the Desert, a project, originally conceived in 1962, which is to consist of two parallel mile-long walls. In 1968, he also participated in Documenta in Kassel. A major exhibition of De Maria’s sculpture was held at the Kunstmuseum Basel in 1972. Earthworks and serial geometric sculpture continue to occupy De Maria in the 1970s: his Three Continent Project was completed in 1972 and the Lightning Field in New Mexico was finished in 1977. That same year, De Maria recreated his Earth Room at the Heiner Friedrich Gallery in New York. The artist lives in New York.--from Guggenheim website

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