About Walter De Maria
Walter Joseph De Maria (October 1, 1935 – July 25, 2013) was an American artist, sculptor, illustrator and composer, who lived and worked in New York City. Walter de Maria's artistic practice is connected with minimal art, conceptual art, and land art of the 1960s. LACMA director Michael Govan said, "I think he's one of the greatest artists of our time." Govan, who worked with De Maria for a number of years, found De Maria's work "singular, sublime and direct". == Life and career == De Maria was born in 1935 in Albany, California. His parents were the proprietors of a local restaurant in Albany and were socially very active, while their son was mostly concentrated on music. Walter De Maria's first academic interest was music—first piano, then percussion. He also took to sports and cars, of which he made drawings. By 1946 he had joined a musicians' union. De Maria studied history and art at the University of California, Berkeley from 1953 to 1959. Trained as a painter, he soon turned to sculpture and began using other media.
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