The sculptor, essayist, and filmmaker Robert Smithson (1938-1973) is most known for his site-specific environmental earth works.

The sculptor Robert Smithson began his career as a painter. Born in Passaic, New Jersey, on January 2, 1938, Smithson was educated in New Jersey public schools. While at Clifton High School he won a scholarship to attend evening classes at the Art Students League. In 1956 he studied at the Brooklyn Museum School. After high school graduation and a brief stint in the Army Reserves, Smithson moved to New York City in 1957. There he painted his first canvasses in an Abstract Expressionist style and developed friendships with poets Allan Brillant and Richard Baker. Smithson's life-long concern for "oppositions" surfaced in these early works where, with a decorative and gestural brushstroke, he painted antithetical religious themes of the celestial and the demonic, the earthly and the spiritual, the sacred and the profane.

Since his...