Alan Sonfist View Profile
Alan Sonfist (b. 1946, The Bronx, NY) is a pioneer of ecological and environmental art, expanding land art beyond spectacle and into activism, preservation, and public responsibility. Rather than reshaping landscapes through massive interventions, his work emphasized restoration instead of disruption, coexistence instead of domination, and long-term ecological processed instead of permanent objects. Sonfist’s central idea is that landscapes hold historical memory, not just human history but biological and geological history. Unlike many land artists, Sonfist focused on urban areas, using native plants, trees, and soil as his materials rather than traditional sculptural media. His works redefined what public sculpture could be; according to the artist, “Civic monuments . . . should honor and celebrate the life and acts of the total community, the human ecosystem, including natural phenomena. Especially within the city, public monuments should recapture and revitalize the history of the natural environment at that location. As in war monuments, that record of life and death of soldiers, the life and death of natural phenomena such as rivers, springs, and natural outcroppings needs to be remembered.”
Sonfist has presented solo exhibitions at Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY (2026); Space21, Seoul (2023); Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, OR (2016); and Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest (2014). Notable group exhibitions include Into Dust: Traces of the Fragile in Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA (2015); Beyond Earth Art: Contemporary Artists and the Environment, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (2014); Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974, MOCA, Los Angeles, and Haus der Kunst, Munich (2012); and The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860 to 1989, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City (2009). He also participated in documenta 6, Kassel, Germany (1977). Previous public art commissions include Endangered Trees of Los Angeles, CA (2016); Ancient Olive Grove of Athena, Florence, Italy (2009); The Burning Forest of Santa Fe, NM (2002) and three Public Art Fund projects: Time Columns of the Northeast (1992); Time Landscape (1979); and 25 W. Tremont Ave. (1978). His work is in the collections of Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; LACMA, Los Angeles; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; the Museum of Modern Art, New York City; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City. He lives and works in New York City.
(as of 2025)
