Walter De Maria was an American artist born in 1935 in California who worked in installation art and sculpture. He is known for his minimalist sculptures and large-scale land art installations such as "The Lightning Field" built in 1977 in New Mexico, which consists of 400 stainless steel poles laid out in a grid intended to attract lightning. De Maria also created "The New York Earth Room" in 1977, filling a gallery with 250 cubic yards of earth. He was a pioneering figure in the land art, minimalist, and conceptual art movements from the 1960s onward.