Richard Long

Richard Long walks, and from the walking comes the work. Since the mid-1960s he has traveled on foot through the Sahara, Iceland, Australia, and the British countryside, turning physical endurance into sculptural idea. The forms that result — circles, lines, spirals — are built from the minerals and earth native to the places he has passed through.

The mud paintings work differently: performative, direct, sourced from rivers near Bristol or expeditions farther out, applied to canvas or wall with the same deliberate geometry. The material is local. The method is consistent.

He represented Britain at the 1976 Venice Biennale, won the Turner Prize in 1989, and received the Praemium Imperiale in 2009. The work is held by the Tate, MoMA, and collections worldwide. He has never left Bristol.