Peter Hutchinson
London 1930

Peter Hutchinson was a trailblazer in land art from the end of the 1960s, along with artists such as Dennis Oppenheim and Robert Smithson. He moved to the United States in 1953, where he graduated with a BFA in Painting from the University of Illinois in 1960. His first works at the end of the 1960s and in the early 1970s were based on interventions in natural spaces by means of organic elements that gradually decomposed into adverse ecosystems. He documented those changes photographically and reflected on the capacity for transformation contained in the energy of nature itself, such as in his projects Theared Calabash (1969), produced in cooperation with Dennis Oppenheim, Biological Circle (1970), Paricutin Volcano Project (1970) and the series of interventions known as Thrown Rope Sculpture, which he started in 1974. At the same time, he produced collages with photographs, drawings and handwritten texts for those projects and constructed landscapes with photo-collages of elements pictured in different parts of the world, combining different types of vegetation and ecosystems by intervening on the photos with oil, gouache and crayons. This resulted in highly visual, colourful works in a constant search for an idyllic nature.

He began to put on solo shows at the end of 1960, with exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (New York, 1969); Krefeld Museum (Krefeld, Germany, 1972); the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, 1974); the Kunstverein Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, Germany, 1977); the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (Massachusetts, United States, 1994); and the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck (Remagen, Germany, 2009-2010). He took part in the group exhibitions which began to disseminate land art at the Dwan Gallery (New York, 1968) and the John Gibson Gallery (New York, 1969), and has participated in recent reviews such as the one organised at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, United States, 2012).

Roberto Díaz