Walter de Maria : Trilogies

Walter De Maria (b. 1935) is known for the expansive and perfectly ordered land art and installations he created in the 1970s. From constructing minimalist spare wooden boxes to using the earth itself as a site for, and element of, his sculpture, he created a diverse body of work that is a testament to his complex investigation of the unseen and the relationship between art, the earth, and the universe. This book introduces an expansive new work, the Bel Air Trilogy(20002011), in which the artist combines exacting geometry with the unexpected element of three 1955 "gypsy-red" Chevrolet Bel Airs. Also included are full-color images of works such as his austere tripartite sculpture Channel Series: Circle, Square, Triangle(1972) and two new monochrome paintings, which complement his large-scale work The Color Men Choose When They Attack The Earth(1968). Accompanying the first major exhibition in the United States to focus exclusively on De Maria, a collection of essays by leading scholars examines the defining features of De Maria's workthe conceptual, theatrical, monumental, and minimal.

Josef Helfenstein is the director of and Clare Elliott is assistant curator at The Menil Collection. Neville Wakefield works as a writer, curator, and critic.