My art is the essence of my experience, not a representation of it
— Richard Long
Richard Long (b. 1945, Bristol, UK) has been a leading figure in British Conceptual and Land Art since the late 1960s, redefining the boundaries of sculpture through the act of walking and an engagement with landscape as both material and subject. His seminal work A Line Made by Walking (1967), created while still a student, marked a radical shift in sculptural practice and laid the foundation for an artistic language in which time, distance and movement became formative elements. Documented as a simple track pressed into grass by the artist’s footsteps, the work transformed a solitary action into a sculptural event and established the premise that a journey itself could constitute art. This approach gained early international recognition with his inclusion in the landmark exhibition When Attitude Becomes Form at the Kunsthalle Bern in 1969.
Long’s relationship with Konrad Fischer Galerie began just one year earlier, in 1968, with his first international solo exhibition in Düsseldorf. Presented only months after A Line Made by Walking, the show featured Sculpture—a work made from willow sticks gathered from the River Avon—and marked a pivotal moment in the young artist’s career. Konrad Fischer’s early and sustained support played a decisive role in bringing Long’s work to a wider European public, positioning his radical engagement with landscape, geometry and movement within an emerging discourse around Minimal and Conceptual art.
Since the late 1960s, Long has expanded his walks and sculptural interventions across wilderness regions throughout the world, from mountain ranges and deserts to riverbeds and coastlines. Working with the materials and conditions of specific sites, he creates temporary sculptures using stones, driftwood, mud and other organic matter, forming archetypal shapes that echo ancient marks in the landscape. These works often remain in situ, shaped by weather and time, and are documented through photographs, maps and text pieces that use precise measurements, place names and descriptions of natural phenomena to generate distilled narratives of movement and experience. In the 1980s, Long began to introduce mud works applied directly to the gallery wall, further extending the relationship between natural environments and institutional space.
Long has exhibited internationally for more than five decades, with major retrospectives and solo exhibitions at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1986); National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (1996); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2006); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2007); Tate Britain, London (2009); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2010); Arnolfini, Bristol (2015); Houghton Hall, Norfolk (2017); De Pont Museum, Tilburg (2019); M Leuven, Belgium (2021); Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (2022–23); and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2023). He represented Britain at the 37th Venice Biennale (1976) and received the Turner Prize in 1989.
Long studied at the West of England College of Art, Bristol (1962–65), followed by St Martin’s School of Art, London (1966–68). He lives and works in Bristol, UK.