Walter De Maria

Walter Joseph De Maria (October 1, 1935July 25, 2013) was an American artist, sculptor, illustrator and composer, who lived and worked in New York City.

De Maria was born in 1935 in Albany, California.

His parents were the proprietors of a local restaurant in Albany and were socially very active, while their son was mostly concentrated on music.

Walter De Maria's first academic interest was music—first piano, then percussion.

He also took to sports and cars, of which he made drawings.

By 1946 he had joined a musicians' union.

De Maria studied history and art at the University of California, Berkeley from 1953 to 1959.

Trained as a painter, he soon turned to sculpture and began using other media.

Walter de Maria's artistic practice is connected with minimal art, conceptual art, and land art of the 1960s.

LACMA director Michael Govan said, "I think he's one of the greatest artists of our time."

Govan, who worked with De Maria for a number of years, found De Maria's work "singular, sublime and direct".

In 1960, De Maria and his friends, the avant-garde composers La Monte Young and Terry Riley, participated in happenings and theatrical productions in the San Francisco area.

From his exposure to the work of La Monte Young and dancer Simone Forti, among others, De Maria developed an interest in task-oriented, game-like projects that resulted in viewer-interactive sculptures.

In 1960, De Maria moved to New York City where he married his wife Susanne Wilson (later Susanna) one year later.

His early sculptures from the 1960s were influenced by Dada, suprematism and constructivism.

This influence led De Maria into using simple geometric shapes and industrially manufactured materials such as stainless steel and aluminium – materials which are also characteristic of Minimal art.

Also in the mid-1960s, he became involved in various artistic activities.

For example, his Boxes for Meaningless Work (1961) is inscribed with the instructions, "Transfer things from one box to the next box back and forth, back and forth, etc. Be aware that what you are doing is meaningless."

He appeared in happenings, composed two musical works (Cricket Music, 1964; Ocean Music, 1968), and produced two films (Three Circles and Two Lines in the Desert; Hardcore, both 1969).

De Maria briefly ran a gallery on Great Jones Street in lower Manhattan with his wife Susanna, showing Joseph Cornell's collection of rare films, Robert Whitman's Happenings (he was then married to and created with dancer/artist Simone Forti), and exhibiting De Maria's Minimalist sculptures made of wood.

With the support of collector Robert C. Scull, De Maria started making pieces in metal in 1965.

In 1965 De Maria became the drummer in the New York-based rock group the Primitives and an artist/musician collaborative group called The Druds.

The Primitives included Lou Reed and John Cale and was a precursor to The Velvet Underground.

His piece, Cage, for John Cage, was included in the seminal 1966 Primary Structures exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York.

From 1968 De Maria produced Minimalist sculptures and installations such as the Munich Erdraum of 1968.

He realized Land art projects in the deserts of the south-west US, 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.

The 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 1 mile × 1 km. The time of day and weather change the optical effects.

It also lights up during thunder storms.

The field is commissioned and maintained by Dia Art Foundation.

In 1980, De Maria bought a four-story, 16,400-square-foot Con Edison substation at 421 East Sixth Street, and an adjacent lot at No. 419, between First Avenue and Avenue A.

It has been speculated that The Lightning Field influenced the imagery of author Cormac McCarthy's epilogue in his 1985 novel, Blood Meridian.

De Maria went to California in May 2013 to celebrate his mother's 100th birthday and had a stroke there a few days later.

He remained there for treatment.

He died in Los Angeles on July 25, 2013, at the age of 77.

He was survived by his mother, Christine De Maria; his brother, Terry; four nieces; four nephews; and four grandnieces and two great-grandnieces.

In February 2014, this property was selling for $25 million.

Businessman and art collector Peter Brant purchased De Maria's studio for $27 million.

Brant's plans for the space were unknown.