LONG, RICHARD

* 2.6.1945 Bristol

Richard Long was born in Bristol in 1945, where he first studied at the West of England College of Art and then from 1966 attended St. Martin's School of Art, London, for two years. At the beginning of his career, the young Richard Long was mainly concerned with sculpture. However, he soon found the usual dimensions too limiting, whereupon he found the solution outside in nature. Thus, in his final thesis, he set out to find an expanded definition of the genre of sculpture, which led him to his lyrical Land Art works. "A Line Made by Walking" is the title of his first work, in which Richard Long traced a line in a meadow with his steps and captured the pattern photographically. A subtle, minimal, and ephemeral intervention in nature. Through its quiet gentleness and restraint, his art sets itself apart from the often monumental-heroic landscape transformations of his US-American artist colleagues.

Richard Long chooses the most diverse places in the world to find inspiration for his works. He finds these places through his epic wanderings, mainly in rocky mountains or deserts in Mexico, the Andes, India, the Himalayas, Japan, Australia and Africa. When he has found a suitable place, he brings stones or wood together and uses them to draw lines, or spiral, labyrinth, cross, ellipse or circle shapes on the ground. As a "romantic wanderer", he is always careful not to damage the surroundings, but to expand and reinterpret them. Through photography, artist's books, drawings, texts, maps, and diagrams, he records his works at the end. Richard Long lives and works in Bristol.