Land Art

Land Art

Land art is creating art directly within the natural landscape, typically shaping the land itself to form earthworks with natural elements.

Land art, often referred to as earth art, was typically recorded through artworks consisting of photographs and maps, enabling artists to display them in galleries. Additionally, land artists would transport materials from the natural landscape into the gallery, employing them to fashion installations within the indoor space.

Land art emerged as a significant component of the broader conceptual art movement during the 1960s and 1970s. One of the most renowned land art creations is Robert Smithson's 1970 Spiral Jetty, an earthwork extending into the Great Salt Lake in the United States. While some artists, like Smithson, employed mechanical earth-moving machinery for their creations, others pursued more understated and fleeting interventions in the natural landscape. For instance, Richard Long achieved his artistic expression by merely walking back and forth until he left a mark in the earth.


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Parra's studio, with Parra at the centre, his back to the camera as he works on the large painting takes centre stage, showing a faceless blue woman in a striped dress, painted in red, purple, blue and teal. The studio is full of brightly coloured paints, with a large window on the right and a patterned rug across the floor under the painting.