Nils Udo

Nils Udo is a landscape artist that originally began as a painter but began to work exclusively with nature in 1972 after he moved from Paris to rural Bavaria and experienced the ongoing destruction of nature. Udo primarily designs site-specific works that only use natural materials from the area.

Udo's "Romantic Landscape" (1992) relates to the human form because it was designed to be used as a children's playground. It is located on the grounds of the Ludwig Forum in Aachen, Germany. It is a constructed landscape that is an attempt to reproduce a specific type of landscape from the German Romantic period. The piece is elevated off the ground on a platform in order to display nature as art and literally set it on a pedestal.

The other piece pictured is "Waterhouse" (1982) located at the Waddensee Mudflats in Holland. It is composed of a pool made from excavated earth, spruce trunks, birch branches , willow switches and sod.

I really love Udo's work. It is very sophisticated and beautiful and demonstrates natural beauty. A lot of his work seems to also work as optical illusions, which I think is cool. I admire Udo's reverence for nature and use of all natural materials.