Maria Nordman

Maria Nordman (born 1943, Görlitz) is a German-American sculptor and conceptual artist.

Nordman immigrated to the USA with her family when she was young.

She became part of Southern California's Light and Space movement. Her art developed in the late 1960s from ephemeral recordings of sights and sounds around Los Angeles, with an "idealistic" desire to create democratic, accessible works. Based in Santa Monica, she became known in California for her light-filled art installations.

In the late 1980s, Nordman erected a small portable house at the 59th Street entrance to Central Park behind the William Tecumseh Sherman Statue, made of plain wood and equipped with seats. In 1990 she first exhibited in New York City, with Exhibition of Permanent Transience where she created a reflective experience using glass panels and still-life objects in the Dia Center for the Arts.

In 2011, Nordman's 1967 work Filmroom: Smoke was displayed as part of a retrospective of Los Angeles art, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The work consisted of two films, one from a static camera and the other handheld, of a couple smoking sitting in an easy chair on a beach.

Nordman has exhibited at Documenta in Germany in 1977, 1982 and 1987. She has exhibited in Italy and held her first Berlin solo show in 2013. Her work has been shown internationally at such institutions as the Stedelijk Museum, Belgium (2013), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California (2011), the Museu Serralves, Portugal (2007), the Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany (1997), and Dia Art Foundation, New York (1991). Her work has been included in group shows at the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin (2011), the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2006), and MoMA PS1, New York (1999).