Alan Sonfist

Alan Sonfist is a New York-based American artist, best known as a pioneer of the Land or Earth Art movement. Born in 1946, Sonfist emerged in the early 1960s as one of the first artists to explore the natural environment and its functioning as a subject of aesthetic inquiry. He uses “time” as an artistic material to shape and highlight the relationships — including critical ones — between nature and culture.
Sonfist distinguishes himself from his contemporaries in the Land Art movement by not treating the natural environment merely as a backdrop for his works, but rather as the very object of his aesthetic investigation. His work signals a shift in perspective that goes beyond a purely anthropocentric view. Through the use of living vegetation and natural materials associated with specific historical periods, Sonfist evokes the history of places, emphasizing the layering of human intervention on the natural landscape. He articulates this idea, stating:
“…just as war memorials record the lives and deaths of soldiers, the life and death of natural phenomena such as rivers, springs, and natural outcroppings must be remembered… Public art can serve to remind us that a city was once a forest or a marsh.”