Ian Hamilton Finlay SCOTTISH, 1925-2006

Britain's leading concrete poet and a distinguished artist, Ian Hamilton Finlay produced work that encompassed prints, books, sculpture, installation, and landscape design, marrying literature, mythology, and the classical tradition. He is well known for his word art, poetry, and text carved into stone or transformed into neon signs and recurring references like Virgil, seafaring culture, the French Revolution, and World War II. Finlay revived the concept of the poet's garden with his best-known work Little Sparta, the classical garden he built in the 1960s with arrangements of natural, sculptural, and poetic elements, including ponds, temples, inscriptions, and sundials.