Walter De Maria, The Vertical Earth Kilometer
Friedrichsplatz Park
Kassel, Germany
Walter De Maria, The Vertical Earth Kilometer, 1977. © The Estate of Walter De Maria. Photo: Nic Tenwiggenhorn
Overview
The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977), located in the Friedrichsplatz Park in Kassel, Germany, is a one-kilometer-long solid brass round rod five centimeters (two inches) in diameter, its full length inserted into the ground with its top reaching flush to the surface of the earth. A red sandstone plate, two meters by two meters square, surrounds the brass rod’s flat circular top, positioning the circle directly in the square’s center. In front of the museum Fridericianum are four footpaths whose intersection marks the sculpture’s location.
As a companion piece to this permanently installed earth sculpture, De Maria created The Broken Kilometer (1979), located at 393 West Broadway in New York City. This work is composed of five hundred two-meter-long solid brass rods, each with the same diameter as the rod used for The Vertical Earth Kilometer, arranged in five parallel rows of one hundred rods each.
The Vertical Earth Kilometer was realized through the help of Documenta VI, Director Dr. Manfred Schneckenberger, and the support of Dia Art Foundation. Technical direction and supervision was carried out by the engineering firm of Dr. Hans Jurgen Pickel, Kassel. The work has been on long-term view to the public since 1977.
Dia Art Foundation maintains 12 locations and sites across the United States and Germany, four of which are long-term installations by Walter De Maria. The American artist began to create work outside the traditional gallery space in the late 1960s, presenting his Mile Long Drawing in 1968 in California’s Mojave Desert. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Dia Art Foundation commissioned some of the artist’s most significant site-specific works, including The Lightning Field (1977) in western New Mexico, and The New York Earth Room (1977) and The Broken Kilometer (1979) in New York. Dia continues to maintain these works as well as De Maria’s The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977) in Kassel, Germany, which is the companion piece to The Broken Kilometer.
Dia is pleased to share this film highlighting the work of Walter De Maria in celebration of our 50th anniversary.
Support provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies
Video: SandenWolff
Interviews: Rachel Wolff and Noah Therrien
Story editor: Rachel Wolff
Filming: Noah Therrien, Jonathan Sanden, Lyle Shanahan, and Nate Reininga
Video editor: Stephen Parnigoni
Assistant editor: Hannah Kaylor
Music: Noah Therrien
Dia Art Foundation staff
Producers: Katherine Ellis and Dan Wolfe
Rights and reproduction: Jenn Kane
Copy editor: Karen Rasaby
Proofreader: Svetlana Kitto
Archivist: Amye McCarther
Oral history coordinator: Lee Colón
Oral history interviews: Matilde Guidelli-Guidi and Amye McCarther
Production assistant: Claire O’Neill
Typesetting: Fernando Zelaya
Director of communications: Hannah Gompertz
Head of marketing: Dani Chin
Director of publications: Kamilah N. Foreman
Special thanks to Elizabeth Childress and the Estate of Walter De Maria
Additional thanks to Bill Dilworth, Patti Dilworth, Heiner Friedrich, Kim Kalberg, Robert Weathers, and Helen Winkler Fosdick
© 2025 Dia Art Foundation
Artist
Walter De Maria
Walter De Maria was born in Albany, California, in 1935. He died in Los Angeles in 2013.
Related Sites
Walter De Maria, The Broken Kilometer
Walter De Maria, The Lightning Field
Walter De Maria, The New York Earth Room
Books
Artists on Walter De Maria
Artists on Walter De Maria is the second installment in a series culled from Dia Art Foundation’s Artists on Artists lectures, focused on the work of artist Walter De Maria. It features contributions from Richard Aldrich, Jeanne Dunning, Guillermo Faivovich and Nicolás Goldberg, and Terry Winters.