Dennis Oppenheim Estate

b. Electric City, US, 1938, d. New York, US, 2011

Dennis Oppenheim’s work is characterized by a multitude of approaches ranging from Land Art to Body Art and includes practices like video, sculpture, installation and even photography. A pioneer of Earth art, alongside Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Dennis Oppenheim sought to situate his works in a natural environment by integrating the particularities of the landscape. Earth art originated in the United States in the 1960s. Works associated with the movement would later be grouped under the more generic term Land Art. The artists of the Earth art movement voluntarily positioned their works away from institutional venues and channels by favouring the production of in-situ pieces. Dennis Oppenheim stood out for his conceptual approach, integrating an explicitly social and political dimension.

His works are included in numerous museum collections including those of the Tate Modern in London, the Stedjelik Museum in Amsterdam, the MAMCO in Geneva, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Kunsthalle Hamburg or the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Saint-Etienne.