![]() Here, he began to create a new genre of earth art using the earth as the canvas and the medium. With his colleague Walter de Maria, Heizer made a trip to the mountains of Sierra Nevada. He even featured in “Spiral Jetty”, a film by Robert Smithson and one of the most widely known examples of earth art. Heizer removed earth from the desert floor, creating negative subterranean forms.ĭuring this part of his career, Heizer collaborated with several other early earth artists. These sculptures used the earth as their canvas and medium. It was here that he began to create his first negative sculptures. Heizer left the cramped city for the deserts of Nevada and California. ![]() Towards the end of 1967, he did just that. It seems that Heizer found New York to be confining, as he longed to return to the planes and geographies of the West. These early “displacement paintings” echo the geometries he can achieve in his later earthworks. In paintings like Track Painting (1967) and Trapezoid Painting (1966), Heizer leaves the interiors of his raw canvas white to emphasize negative space, but he paints the perimeters black to highlight the contrast. Fascinated with the melodies of space and matter, and absence and presence, Heizer would continue to explore these themes throughout his career. Heizer used PVA latex to paint these geometric canvases, and these untraditionally shaped canvases highlight his early exploration of negative and positive forms. Heizer’s first paintings, which he called “negative paintings,” were on shaped canvases, blending his love of painting with his passion for form. Heizer supported himself in New York by painting apartments, and he began to work on his first abstract paintings and sculptures. In New York, Heizer came into contact with several prominent artists, including Dan Flavin, Tony Smith, Carl Andre, Frank Stella, and Walter De Maria. Heizer then moved to New York in 1966, leaving the after a year. Site drawings continued to be an integral part of Heizer’s artistic process throughout his career.īeginning in 1963, Heizer spent a year at the San Fransisco Art Institute. Heizer drew the sites while his father studied ancient monument rock sources. Jenkins, was a geologist, and one cannot ignore his influence on Heizer’s artistic development.Īt the age of 12, Heizer took a year away from schooling as he accompanied his father to Mexico for an archeological dig. ![]() Throughout his youth, Heizer’s father exposed him to the landscapes of Nevada, Bolivia, Peru, and California. His father, Robert Fleming Heizer, was one of the leading anthropologists of his time and specialized in Native American culture in Western America. In 1944, Michael Heizer was born in California, in the city of Berkeley. With his land-based artworks, Heizer challenges artists and audiences to break the confines of art galleries and find beauty in the natural world. ![]() Since the 1960s, Heizer has been pushing the boundaries of the art world. Early in his life, Heizer experienced a wide range of influences that shaped his career. Many believe that Heizer’s childhood destined him for this artistic path.
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