ART CITIES:N.York-Walter De Maria

Elizabeth Childress, former director of the De Maria studio, and current director of the Walter De Maria Collection and Archives, commented, “Walter so wished to establish his own foundation, but sadly he did not accomplish this during his lifetime. It is an important step to have this entity as both a protection and a promotion of his legacy”.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gagosian Gallery Archive

The dream of the artist realized by the famous Gallerist Larry Gagosian, A nonprofit entity established by Larry Gagosian, the Walter De Maria Foundation will be dedicated to managing the late artist’s rights and reproductions, advising on curatorial matters, and overseeing the preparation of a major monograph. Walter De Maria was born in 1935 in Albany, California. He lived and worked in New York from 1960 until his death in 2013. For more than five decades, he was a singular figure whose rigorous and visionary works changed the very parameters of art history. Combining precise geometry with vast scale, his remarkable installations gave fresh impact and new meaning to the experience of looking at art, while enhancing and expanding the appreciation of the surrounding world. Gagosian Gallery is proud to announce the representation of the Estate of the late Walter De Maria, a vital figure in the evolution of Minimalism, Conceptual art, Land art, and installation and exhibits sculptures and works on paper from the Estate are presented at 980 Madison Avenue. The works on view, which date from 1976 to 1990, include the largest pair from The Equal Area Series 1976–90, Pair Number 25. Each of the 25 pairs in the series comprises a 7/8-inch thick, solid stainless steel circle and square which, despite their distinctive geometries, measure nearly the same square space. The Pure Polygon Series (1976), an editioned portfolio of seven drawings executed with a stencil, complements these sculptures. And, finally, De Maria’s prescient meditation on the incalculable reality of existence.