Richard Long: Petrified Wood Circle

A circle of petrified, densely packed pieces of wood, half made of cedar and half of redwood from the American sequoia tree, without a plinth or border, measuring three metres, lying directly on the ground. Petrified Wood Circle is one of the iconic ground sculptures by Turner Prize winner and pioneer of British Land Art Richard Long, who was born in Bristol, Great Britain in 1945. The material for his work, created in 2000

The artist collected the material for his work, created in 2000, while travelling in remote places around the world and arranged it in a circle in order to visualise the layer "that lies on top of thousands of other layers of human and geographical history on the surface of the land." (R. Long, 1969) Long explains his traces of walking through the landscape, stones and wood that he aligns in a circle, a ring of handprints that he paints on a wall, or thinking about the changing direction of the wind to sculpture. His works embody life itself, they are personal and still, closely linked to universal, timeless forms of action, as well as to the earth that produces his sculptures and into which they will eventually return.

The Petrified Wood Circle also makes a pilgrimage along the PURPLE PATH sculpture trail. set up in the Jakobikirche in Chemnitz in 2023 and in the Evangelical Lutheran City Church of St. Mary in Zwickau in 2024, the sculpture was installed at a third station in the cloister of Freiberg's St. Mary's Cathedral. All three locations are connected by the Saxon Way of St James on the medieval Franconian Way, which leads pilgrims to the tomb of St James the Elder in Santiago de Compostela. The Spanish city was the European Capital of Culture in 2000. At the end of the Way of St James, Long created the work Camino Hands, a circle made from impressions of pilgrims' hands. In this way, the artist creates an arc and closes a circle for the pilgrim.