Alan Sonfist

Alan Sonfist
Time Landscape of New York
Born
Bronx, New York City
NationalityAmerican
Known forSustainable Art
MovementEnvironmental Art, Land Art

Alan Sonfist (born March 26, 1946[1]) is a New York City based American artist best known as a "pioneer"[2] and a "trailblazer"[2] of the Land or Earth Art movement.[3]

He first gained prominence for his "Time Landscape" found on the corner of West Houston Street and LaGuardia Place in New York City's Greenwich Village.[4][5] Proposed in 1965, "Time Landscape" the environmental sculpture took over ten years of careful planning with New York City. It was eventually landmarked by the city. It has often been cited as the first urban forest of its kind. More recently, Sonfist has continued to create artworks within the natural landscape, inaugurating a one-acre (4,000 m2) landscape project titled "The Lost Falcon of Westphalia" on Prince Richard's estate outside Cologne, Germany in 2005.[6]

In Nature: The End of Art, environmentalist Jonathan Carpenter writes that "To review the public sculptures of Alan Sonfist since the 1960s is to witness the reemergence of the socially aware artist. His sculptures reassert the historical role of the artist as an active initiator of ideas within society. Each of his artworks fundamentally redefine what sculpture is, who the artist is, and how art should function for its public."[2]

  1. ^ Goldstein, Alan. "Alan Sonfist Timeline". The Art Story. Retrieved 11 May 2024.
  2. ^ a b c Sonfist, Alan, Wolfgang Becker, and Robert Rosenblum. Nature, the End of Art: Environmental Landscapes. New York: D.A.P., 2004. Print.
  3. ^ Michael Brenson (13 July 1990), "Review/Art; Plaster as a Medium, Not Just an Interim Step", The New York Times, retrieved 2011-02-14
  4. ^ Ann Landi, Separating the Trees from the Forest, Art News, http://www.artnews.com/2011/08/15/separating-the-trees-from-the-forest/, 8/15/2011
  5. ^ Stiles, Kristine; Selz, Peter Howard (1996), Theories and documents of contemporary art: a sourcebook of artists' writings, University of California Press, p. 545, ISBN 978-0-520-20251-1
  6. ^ "The Falcon Alan Sonfist-waldskulpturenweg.de". Archived from the original on 2013-04-14.