In a review of Groundswell: Women of Land Art, Deborah Solomon writes on Lita Albuquerque.
The cover of the “Groundswell” catalog shows a detail of Lita Albuquerque’s “Spine of the Earth” (1980), a since-vanished artwork in the Mojave whose central spiral — done in red powdered pigment — looks like colorized Smithson.
Albuquerque, now 77, who lives in California, also provides the exhibition with a pop mascot, “Najma Returns,” an ultramarine-blue, life-size sculpture of a woman that greets visitors in the lobby of the museum. Whether or not you engage with its operatic back story — Najma is a 25th-century astronaut with ideas about the cosmos — Albuquerque’s way with color enchants. I found myself oohing before her “Untitled,” a foot-and-a-half-high granite rock dusted in a coat of Prussian blue powdered pigment that looks as if it fell to earth from a yet-to-be-discovered cerulean planet.
Read more in the New York Times.
