Michael Heizer was born in Berkeley, California, in 1944. He briefly
attended the San Francisco Art Institute and moved to New York City in
1966, where he produced large-scale paintings. In late 1968-69, Heizer
chose to operate between his studios in New York and a ranch he eventually
built in Nevada. Here, he began to produce large-scale sculptures such as
Nine Nevada Depressions and Displaced/Replaced Mass, as well as large
earth drawings and paintings on dry lakes in California and Nevada. To
interpret these immense sculptures in a gallery setting, Heizer developed
his unique use of large-scale still photography in the form of collages
and static projections. Several shows with oversize rock-in-floor
depressions were produced in Los Angeles and New York with Ace Gallery.
His 1969 artwork Double Negative (now owned by the Museum of Contemporary
Art, Los Angeles) inspired generations of artists. Heizer is currently
completing his largest project, City, begun in 1972. Permanent
installations of Heizer’s sculpture can be found throughout the United
States, including Seattle, Washington; Oakland, California; the Menil 3
Collection and Rice University in Houston, Texas; the MIT campus in Boston,
Massachusetts and the corner of 56th and Madison Avenue in New York City.
Major exhibitions of his work have been presented at the Whitney Museum of
American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles;
Foundazione Prada, Milan, Italy, and at the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller,
Otterlo, Holland.