By the late 1960s, artists began to reconsider the genre of landscape, not merely as a representational form but as an expanded field where the site itself became an integral component of the work. Within this shift, the forest emerged as a privileged locus, embodying a profound duality. For centuries, it had oscillated between locus horridus—a space of darkness, fear and danger—and locus amoenus—a realm of harmony, fertility and refuge. In the context of contemporary art, however, the forest increasingly lost its threatening aura and was reimagined as a metaphor of origin, paradise and ecological truth. The analysis traces the cultural genealogy of the forest, from mythological cosmogonies and sacred groves to Romantic nostalgia and the modern transformation of woodland into parks and sculpture gardens. This trajectory reveals how the forest gradually shifted from a wild, impenetrable realm to a domesticated site of aesthetic experience, where the encounter with art is mediated by walking, rhythm, and immersion in shade and light. What once symbolised exile, wilderness or mystery becomes reconfigured as a hospitable space for ecological reflection and artistic intervention. In contemporary practice, the forest is no longer an external backdrop but a structural element of the artwork itself. Land art, environmental sculpture, and site-specific installations appropriate the materiality of trees, soil, light and organic processes, situating the spectator within an environment where perception, memory and myth converge. This domestication, however, entails a paradox: by transforming the forest into a museum-like container of artworks, its shadow—its archaic dimension of danger and otherness—appears to vanish. The forest becomes both a recovered refuge and a curated stage, embodying the collective longing for reconciliation with nature while exposing the impossibility of returning to an untouched origin. Thus, the forest in art since 1968 must be understood as a symbolic reconstruction rather than a literal return: a place where culture negotiates its estrangement from nature, and where the act of walking among trees becomes a metaphor for navigating the complexities of modernity, memory and ecological consciousness.
Santamaría Fernández, A.E., 2016. El arte emboscado: el regreso al bosque en la práctica artística desde 1968. Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
