Agnes Denes

Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1931,[4] her family survived World War II, the Nazi occupation, and moved to Sweden on their way to the United States.

She soon abandoned painting, due to the constraints of the canvas, and focused broadly on ideas she could explore in other mediums,[2] saying, "I found its vocabulary limiting.

Acknowledged as the first site-specific performance piece with ecological concerns,[2] it was enacted ten years later on an expanded scale at Artpark in Lewiston, New York.

This performance piece involved planting rice seeds in a field in upstate New York, chaining surrounding trees and burying a time capsule filled with copies of her haiku.

[14] Along with the rice, time capsule, and ceremonial chaining of trees in the park, Denes shot photographs of Niagara Falls for this iteration of Rice/Tree/Burial to "add natural force as the fourth element and fuse the other three".

[15] After months of preparations, in May 1982, a two-acre (0.8 ha) wheat field was planted on a landfill in lower Manhattan, two blocks from Wall Street and the World Trade Center, facing the Statue of Liberty, sponsored by the Public Art Fund.

To create the work, titled Wheatfield — A Confrontation, 200 truckloads of dirt were brought in and 285 furrows were dug by hand and cleared of rocks and garbage.

The field was maintained for four months, cleared of wheat smut, weeded, fertilized, and sprayed against mildew fungus, and an irrigation system was set up.

A conceptual master plan was developed for the conversion of a 97-acre municipal landfill, surrounded by water on three sides in the San Francisco Bay, into an oasis for people and nature.

The result was, according to Jill Hartz of Cornell University, "an amazing body of work, distinguished by its intellectual rigor, aesthetic beauty, conceptual analysis, and environmental concern.

"The Pyramid Suite and Project Drawings", View Gallery, New York "Agnes Denes - El Concepto Hecho Forma, Obras, 1970-1990", Anselmo Alvarez Galeria de Arte, Madrid, Spain (catalog) Northern Illinois University Art Gallery, Chicago, Ill. "Anima/Persona - The Seed", Elise Meyer, Inc., New York "Agnes Denes", Galleriet, Lund, Sweden Galerie Aronowitsch, Stockholm, Sweden Studio d'Arte Cannaviello, Milan, Italy "Agnes Denes: Work 1968-78", Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, England (catalog) "Sculptures of the Mind," Centre Culturel Americain, Paris, France "Animi Pathema - The Emotional Animal", 112 Greene Street Gallery, New York "Agnes Denes", Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, Calif. "Sculptures of the Mind", University of Akron, Ohio (catalog) Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio