Michael Heizer

Michael Heizer is a contemporary American artist known as one of the pioneers of Land Art alongside Walter de Maria and Robert Smithson. Heizer’s large-scale sculpture City (1972–present) in Nevada, calls to mind both science fiction and the monoliths of pre-Columbian civilisations. “Immense, architecturally sized sculpture creates both the object and the atmosphere,” he has said. “Awe is a state of mind equivalent to religious experience, I think if people feel commitment they feel something has been transcended.” Born on November 4, 1944 in Berkeley, CA, as a youth he went on trips to archaeological sites in Mexico and Peru with his father, who was a professor of pre-Columbian civilizations at UC Berkeley. Heizer went on to study at the San Francisco Art Institute before moving to New York in 1966. In New York, he worked odd jobs, made small geometric paintings, and De Maria, Dan Flavin, and Frank Stella. After initially focused on painting, the artist moved to Nevada in the late 1960s, living on a piece of land purchased by the gallerist Virginia Dawn. Beginning the City in 1972, Heizer has continued to work tirelessly on the project in the decades that followed. The artist continues to live and work in Hiko, NV. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others.

[above text from Artnet]