Born in Samoa, Richard Wentworth worked for Henry Moore, studied at the Royal College of Arts and was awarded the Mark Rothko Memorial (1974) and the Berlin DAAD Fellowship (1993/94). He taught at Goldsmith's College from 1971 to 1987, worked in New York and now lives in London.

His works have been shown in various institutions such as the Serpentine Gallery, the Whitechapel Art Gallery, the Hayward Gallery, London; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna; the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris.