I like common materials, whatever is to hand, but especially stones. I like the idea that stones are what the world is made of. — Richard Long
Richard Long is one of the most influential sculptors of the post-war period, having fundamentally expanded the possibilities of sculpture through his sustained exploration of walking, landscape, time and the physical relationship between the human body and the natural world. Since the late 1960s, he has worked across sculpture, photography, text and drawing, and has established a singular artistic language grounded in movement, direct experience and the elemental properties of natural materials. At its core is a deceptively simple proposition: that the act of moving through the world, and the marks that movement leaves behind, can become a means of making art. As Long stated himself : “my work is very simple...it is shapes and forms which are not my own, circles and lines belong to everyone.”
Richard Long was born in Bristol, England, in 1945, and continues to live and work there. He studied at the West of England College of Art in Bristol from 1962 to 1965, before attending St Martin’s School of Art in London between 1966 and 1968. At St Martin’s, he was part of a generation of young British artists questioning established definitions of sculpture and seeking alternatives to the monumental, industrial forms associated with prevailing sculptural practice. His contemporaries included Hamish Fulton, Bruce McLean, Gilbert and George, and Barry Flanagan. In this context, Long began to explore a more direct relationship between artistic action and physical experience.