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Land art is a type of site-specific artwork in which artists create sculptures, stencil graffiti, rock balancing, or other art forms and place them in any natural environment. These works can be temporary or permanent, and although artists can use different ways to create this type of work, they all use local materials to create pieces that are portrayed in the landscape.

Key artists of this movement include Robert Smithson, Christo & Jean-Claude, Maya Ying Lin, and Nancy Holt.

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The Case for Land Art | The Art Assignment | PBS Digital Studios

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Land art was partially born out of the protest-filled 1960s and 1970s by contemporary artists fighting against the commercial straitjacket imposed by materialistic art galleries and dealers. Many of the projects were beyond the reach of everyday viewers requiring traveling to remote locations in order to admire the work. This required photographic documentation to be displayed in normal galleries to reach a greater audience.

Other Minimalism artists tried to liberate sculpture from the gallery and museum altogether by creating works that were "anchored" to their natural surroundings.

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Land art has been associated with a number of other art forms, including traditional sculpture, De Stijl, Cubism, Minimalist and Conceptual art, Assemblage and Installation. The most influential art movements in the development of Land art are: Minimalism, Conceptualism and Arte Povera.

Land art shared certain characteristics with Minimalism, including its simplicity; concern with how objects occupied their space; and the interaction of humans with the art. It also drew on process art styles of Installation art and performance art due to the performative nature of land art. Many artists documented their process of production and sometimes included a performance element as part of the artwork. Land art also drew the Arte Povera style by utilizing common materials such as earth, rocks, clothing, and paper.

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Robert Smithson’s (1938–1973) Spiral Jetty is one of the most famous land art ever created. Spiral Jetty, a spiral formation in Utah’s great Salt Lake, was created out of basalt and earth bulldozed. The spiral shape was inspired by whirlpool, as well as by the configuration of salt deposits that accumulate on rocks bordering the lake. In creating the spiral, the artist used basalt boulders, which were once part of the existent volcanoes in the region. Hence, it's very possible that, when planning this artwork, Smithson was also inspired by the volcano shape, which is also similar to a whirlpool.

The spiral jetty artwork stayed submerged underwater for many years. Then, with prolonged drought, the spiral began to reemerge in 1999. Depending on the water levels of the lake, it comes and goes.

Smithson once said: “I like landscapes that suggest prehistory.” Although it is hard to know whether he was inspired by a particular prehistoric place, object, or creature, Smithson created a unique and exotic land work that has impressed all those that visit the lake.

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Surrounded Islands was environmental artwork in which artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude surrounded an island archipelago in Miami with pink fabric. Like many other Christo and Jeanne-Claude's previous art projects, Surrounded Islands was entirely financed by personal funds obtained through the sale of preparatory drawings, collages, and early works. The artists did not accept sponsorship of any kind. The installation mounted for 11 days in May 1983, and it was mainly viewed by aerial photography and over television. Surrounded Islands was their most expensive work to date and their largest work by size in their lifetimes. The finished work played a strong role in developing the city's reputation as a place of culture.

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Sun Tunnels, Holt's most recognized artwork,  is a large-scale installation in Utah's Great Basin Desert. The artwork consists of four large concrete cylinders, placed on the desert floor in a cross pattern, that align with the sunrise and sunset on the summer and winter solstices.

In addition to this perfect solar framing, all cylinders are pierced with smaller holes representing the stars of four constellations: Draco, Perseus, Columba, and Capricorn. The artist's design allows for an ever-changing set of light on the surfaces of her work. The diameters of the holes have different sizes in order to portray the right scale of the stars that the are being represented. These holes cast spots of daylight in the dark interiors of the tunnels, which appear almost like the star constellations themselves, projected against the interior surface. In Holt's words, the four concrete tubes "bring the vast space of the desert back to human scale."

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Maya Lin, a Chinese-American is both artist and architect. She catapulted into the public eye when, as a senior at Yale University, she entered and won the design competition for the Vietnam Veteran Memorial in Washington DC.

Maya Lin was still an undergraduate at Yale University when she beat out more than 1,400 competitors in a competition to design the memorial. Instead of something heroic or celebratory, Lin imagined two stark black walls that began inside the earth, then grew and grew in height until they met—like a “wound that is closed and healing.” At the time many

“I just wanted to be honest with people,” Lin told The Washington Post. “I didn’t want to make something that said ‘They’ve gone away for a while.’ I wanted something that would just simply say ‘They can never come back. They should be remembered.’” Many did not like Lin's bleak design, wanting something more imposing and grandiose similar to other monuments on the Mall.

As an artist and architect her sculptures, monuments, and architectural projects are linked by her ideal of making a place for individuals within the landscape.

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The Wave Field on Michigan University North Campus is a collection of rolling ocean wave-like topography sculpted using basic garden tools.

The design and location are very deliberate as the Wave Field is located directly between two engineering buildings on campus. Lin drew on engineering/physics principles as inspiration for this piece. She even used scientific data to recreate life size ocean waves. Lin is able to blend hard science and nature into a beautiful piece that thousands of students can enjoy.

This piece is the first of a three-part land art wave field series. The other two are located in New York and Florida.