This thesis explores walking as an aesthetic and creative practice, investigating its role across the arts and humanities as a medium for thought, artistic expression and reconnection with the surrounding world. Drawing from the rich tradition of thinkers and artists who have elevated walking into a generative method—ranging from Rousseau, Baudelaire and De Quincey to Joyce, Benjamin, Azorín and Unamuno—the study positions walking as a bridge between body, space and reflection. The central argument suggests that in a time increasingly dominated by digital devices and virtual interactions, walking offers a tangible means of re-engaging with both natural and urban landscapes, counteracting the alienation between the subject and their environment. The research examines how certain paradigmatic artists have employed walking not merely as a physical activity, but as a methodological and aesthetic tool, enabling them to encounter, interpret and ultimately incorporate the environment into their creative processes. Through case analyses, the thesis shows how this embodied engagement allowed artists to perceive their surroundings more intensely and produce work rooted in lived spatial experience. The author contends that such practices foster a heightened sensitivity toward the immediate landscape, contributing to a renewed valuation of presence, movement and place. Positioned within the field of artistic research and framed by broader concerns about the erosion of direct sensory experience in contemporary life, the work calls for walking to be reconsidered as a critical and poetic act, capable of revitalising both individual perception and collective cultural practices.
Torres Delgado, F. de B. de (2024) Caminar como práctica estética: exploraciones creativas entre naturaleza, ciudad y subjetividad. Doctoral thesis. Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, Facultad de Educación.
