Michael Heizer

Michael Heizer
Charmstone, 1991, Menil Collection
Born	1944 (1944) Berkeley, California
Nationality	American
Field	Sculpture, Land art
Training	San Francisco Art Institute

Michael Heizer, Isolated Mass/Circumflex (#2), site-specific sculpture, 1968-72, Menil Collection

Michael Heizer is a contemporary artist specializing primarily in large-scale sculptures and earth art (or land art).

Heizer was born in Berkeley, California in 1944; and he attended the San Francisco Art Institute. Traveling to New York City in 1966, he began his career producing more conventional, small-scale paintings and sculptures. In the late 1960s, however, Heizer left New York City for the deserts of California and Nevada, where he began to produce larger-scale works that could not fit into a museum setting, except perhaps in photographs. This culminated in the production of Double Negative, a 1500-ft trench Heizer cut into the side of a mesa in the Nevada desert.

Since then, Heizer has continued his exploration of earthworks, with his efforts directed primarily toward City, an enormous complex in the rural desert of Lincoln County, Nevada. He has also produced a number of abstract paintings, and his large-scale sculptures, often inspired by Native American forms, can be found in museums and public spaces worldwide.

Since the late 1990s, Heizer's work has focused primarily on City, and his work continues to this day, supported by the Dia Art Foundation through a grant from the Lannan Foundation. City is not yet available to the public.

List of works

• Double Negative (1969–70), located near Overton, Nevada
• Isolated Mass/Circumflex (#2) (1968–72), Menil Collection (Houston, Texas)
• Adjacent, Against, Upon (1976), Myrtle Edwards Park (Seattle, Washington)
• 45 Degrees, 90 Degrees, 180 Degrees (1984), Rice University (Houston, Texas)
• City (1972, unfinished), in rural Lincoln County, Nevada
• Levitated Mass (Fall 2011), Resnick Pavilion North Lawn at LACMA (Los Angeles, California)

External links

• Webpage of Heizer at the Dia Art Foundation
• Levitated Mass Michael Heizer in the spotlight of California.

Persondata
Name	Heizer, Michael
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	dt=1944-1944
Place of birth	Berkeley, California
Date of death
Place of death