Robert Smithson

b 1938 in Passaic, NJ (USA) – died in Texas in 1973.
After some early minimal works, in the 1960s and 1970s he created work which responded to a the natural and industrial environment. His most famous work is «Spiral Jetty» (1970), a 1500 feet long spiral-shaped jetty extending into the Great Salt Lake in Utah constructed from rocks, earth, salt and red algae. It was entirely submerged by rising lake waters for several years, but has since reemerged.
As well as works of art, Smithson produced a good deal of theoretical and critical writing. Concerned with the relationship of a piece of art to its environment, he developed his concept of sites and non-sites. A site was a work located in a specific outdoor location, while a non-site was a work which could be displayed in any suitable space, such as an art gallery.
Smithson died 1973 in a plane crash while working on his work «Amarillo Ramp» in Texas.