Richard Hunt 1935–

Sculptor

At a Glance…

A Native Chicagoan

Achieved Recognition as a Student

First New York Show at Age 23

Increased Demand for Public Sculpture

Works Created in Two Studios and Metal Factory

Interpreted Nature Using Industrial Techniques

Selected works

Sources

Richard Hunt is an internationally known sculptor whose career has spanned four decades. His abstract works of welded steel and bronze are based on natural forms and have been exhibited in some of the most prestigious museum collections in the United States and abroad, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modem Art in New York, the Hirshhom Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of the Twentieth Century in Vienna, Austria. More than 30 of Hunt’s public sculptures are located in and around greater Chicago, where he was born and raised. During the summer of 1992, he created his own versions of biblical icons for Chicago’s Holy Angels Church and worked on his most ambitious commission yet, an installation of seven different sculptures for the plaza of the Bennett Williams Building in Washington, D.C.

A characteristic outdoor work by the sculptor is the 30-foot high Eagle Column, completed in 1989 and installed in Jonquil Park, just a few blocks away from Hunt’s mid-North Side Chicago studio. Seen by as many as one million people a day who ride the city’s elevated railway, the piece was described by the Chicago Tribune as “a quintessential sculpture from this stage” of the artist’s career.

Eagle Column exemplifies two significant aspects of Hunt’s work: a thematic concern with the past and its relation to the present, and the use and influence of natural forms in abstract sculptures. Eagle Column is rooted in the past, being a monument dedicated to John Peter Altgeld, a liberal governor of Illinois during the 1890s who once lived in the neighborhood around Jonquil Park. Altgeld, whom Hunt characterized for the Chicago Tribune as “a humanist revered by many and scorned by some,” was dubbed “the Eagle Forgotten” by American poet and bard Vachel Lindsay, who wrote a long poem about the nineteenth-century politician.

Eagle Column is situated on a semicircular site and consists of a three-piece ensemble of welded bronze towers sitting atop a pink granite base. The following description, taken from the Chicago Tribune, reveals Hunt’s treatment of the forms of nature and their relation to the industrial welding techniques required to produce his sculptures: ‘“The base is geometric and architectural, like a squat, square column. As it ascends it tapers, but smaller columns emerge at the corners. Something strange happens near the top: The bronze begins curving, branching, changing direction and spreading, as though it were being poured upside down, splashing into the sky. At the

At a Glance…

Born Richard Howard Hunt, September 12, 1935, in Chicago, IL; married first wife, 1957 (divorced 1966); married Lenora Cartright, 1983 (died 1989): children: (first marriage) Cecilia. Education: School of the Art Institute of Chicago, B.A.E., 1957; also attended University of Illinois at Chicago and University of Chicago.

Traveled in Europe, 1957-58; first one-person show at the Alan Gallery, New York City, 1958; instructor at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1960-61, and University of Illinois at Chicago, 1960-62. Works exhibited at numerous galleries and museums, including the Cleveland Museum of Art; Milwaukee Art Center; Art Institute of Chicago; Baltimore Museum of Art; Martin Gallery, National Museum of American Art, and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, all in Washington, DC; the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Dorsky Gallery, and Terry Dintenfass Gallery, all in New York City; National Museum of Israel, Jerusalem; and the Museum of the Twentieth Century, Vienna.

Visiting professor at several colleges and universities, including Chouinard Art School, Northern Illinois University, and Northwestern University; visiting artist at Yale, Purdue, Wisconsin State, and Southern Illinois universities; artist-in-residence, Harvard University, 1989-90. Board member, American Council for the Arts. Military service: Served in U.S. Army, 1958-60.

Awards: Logan Prize, 1956, 1961, and 1962; Palmer Prize and James Nelson Raymond Travel fellowship, both 1957; Campana Prize, 1962; Sidney R. Yates Arts Advocacy Award, 1990; fellow of the Guggenheim, Ford, and Cassandra foundations.

Addresses: Studio —;1017 West Lill, Chicago, IL 60614.

sculpture’s apex, nearly 30 feet high, the welded metal tapers into pointed tongues of flame, or wings—some sort of exfoliating natural form erupting into the air.”

As Chicago Tribune writer David McCracken noted, Eagle Column displays a characteristic mix of concerns that is found in many of Hunt’s sculptures: “wild, natural forms…rendered in industrial materials and techniques that remind one of the city’s factories, its grit and hard edges.”

A Native Chicagoan

Hunt was born in 1935—in the midst of the Great Depression—on Chicago’s South Side. Both of his parents had rural backgrounds, his father being from Georgia and his mother from southern Illinois. Hunt was raised primarily on the South Side, but he spent a few years in grammar school in Galesburg, a small town in Illinois where his parents moved for a time while he was growing up. Throughout his life, Hunt would be equally at home in the city, where he maintained a studio and apartment, and in the country, where he bought a farmhouse on 26 acres in 1974. The artist credited his exposure to the beauties of the countryside as influencing his use of natural forms in his sculpture, although he commented in the Chicago Tribune, “It’s not like I go here and there with a sketchbook.”

As a young man in the 1940s, Hunt worked in the family barbershop. During this time of almost complete racial segregation, the barbershop was a place where black men discussed the politics of the day. As a result, Hunt began to form his own political and social opinions at an early age. Hunt’s mother was a librarian who instilled a love of books and music in her only son. She took him to performances in Chicago by local black opera companies. He learned to play the violin and studied it for years. Hunt developed a particular interest in the works of classical composer George Frideric Handel, and his passion for classical music has remained an important part of his life. The sculptor has even staged musical presentations in his studio. In 1988, for instance, it was the site of the world premiere of a concerto for two violins and chamber orchestra by T. J. Anderson, former head of the music department at Tufts University near Boston.

During his youth, Hunt enjoyed art and music equally; by the time he was in high school, though, he decided that his talent for art was much stronger. He enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, studying there from 1953 to 1957. Having earned a bachelor’s degree in art education, he knew he would be able to teach in the Illinois public school system if he proved unsuccessful as an artist.

In order to complete his degree, Hunt was required to take additional courses at both the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Chicago. To help pay for his tuition, he worked in the University of Chicago’s zoology laboratories. Hunt told the Chicago Tribune that his early and continuing interest in the biological sciences and history “played a part” in his “sculptural development.”

Shortly after he graduated in 1957, Hunt married a classmate and fellow artist. They were wed for nearly a decade and had one daughter, Cecilia, before divorcing. Hunt was single for the next 17 years; then, in 1983, he married Lenora Cartright. She enjoyed a distinguished career as a dean at the University of Illinois, a city official under Chicago mayors Jane Byrne and Harold Washington, and a consultant on human affairs and community relations. After she died unexpectedly of liver cancer in 1989, Hunt organized the Lenora Cartright-Hunt Chicago Student Emergency Fund in her honor.

Achieved Recognition as a Student

Hunt first distinguished himself as a sculptor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, earning a substantial number of scholarships and museum prizes. He won the Art Institute’s Logan Prize three times, the Palmer Prize in 1957, and the James Nelson Raymond Foreign Travel fellowship that same year. While still a student, Hunt was “discovered” by New York gallery owner Charles Alan, who first saw the artist’s work in Chicago and bought a piece. He also signed Hunt up as an Alan Gallery regular, promising him a one-person show after he graduated.

The travel fellowship that Hunt won in 1957 enabled him to spend the next year in England, France, Italy, and Spain. He was influenced there by the boom in British sculpture and by the works of Spanish sculptor Julio Gonzalez. When Hunt returned to the United States, he was drafted into the army, where he became an official army artist. His assignments involved mostly graphic designs for posters, signs, and charts.

First New York Show at Age 23

Hunt went into the army in 1958—about the same time his first show was opening at the Alan Gallery in New York. The show, which was favorably reviewed in the New York Times by Dore Ashton, consisted primarily of welded structures made from pipes, rods, and “oddments.” Ashton noted that while other sculptors working in this medium tended to present “frontal views [and] project linear drawings in space,” Hunt’s work was more satisfying. “In his carefully finished compositions there is a graceful continuity. Larger volumes are balanced by soaring, tapered lines, or an asymmetrical axis supports the suggestion of radiating forms in transition,” the reviewer commented.

The role of natural forms in Hunt’s sculpture was apparent in his first show. Ashton observed that “although most of Hunt’s sculptures are abstractions, they do suggest observation of the living forms of nature,” and went on to praise the works as being “inventively varied, clustered at times with mysterious deep shadows … or vibrating in close sequences.” It was an auspicious debut for the 23-year-old sculptor, who one year earlier had made his first sale to the Museum of Modern Art.

Hunt settled back in Chicago after his stint in the army, teaching briefly from 1960 to 1962 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Illinois. Steady sales through New York galleries led him to embark on a career as a full-time artist. Although he lived and worked in Chicago and had been born and raised there, Hunt did not want to be identified solely as a “Chicago” artist. Ever since the 1960s, Hunt has shown his works regularly at New York galleries as well as at university galleries throughout the United States.

Although he had a degree in art education to fall back on, Hunt never had a desire to teach full time. Throughout his career, though, he has accepted many invitations to serve as visiting artist or visiting professor at various colleges and universities. He spent the 1989-90 academic year at Harvard University as artist-in-residence.

Increased Demand for Public Sculpture

Hunt received his first commission for a public sculpture in the mid-1960s, but it was not until the late 1970s and early 1980s that demand for his works increased. By this time, he was welding many of his sculptures in aluminum, bronze, and steel, rather than copper and iron, which he had used to construct his earlier works. And the size and density of his sculptures increased over the decades, leading to the huge spatial undertakings of the 1980s.

By the 1990s, public commissions made up an estimated 75 percent of his output. Through these large outdoor and indoor public pieces, Hunt was able to combine self-expression with the need to serve a public purpose. According to Frank Getlein in the Smithsonian, “Some of his most important works refer to or come out of the black experience in America.” Notable examples include I Have Been to the Mountain, a memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., located in Memphis, Tennessee, where the civil rights leader was slain, and Freedmen’s Column, located at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Jacob’s Ladder, installed at the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library on Chicago’s South Side, is a metaphor for knowledge and opportunity. Hung in a 27-foot-high atrium with a skylight overhead, the work consists of “two giant welded-bronze ‘arms’ reaching down toward the floor, each [with] a pair of great claws at its end,” noted Getlein. “One pair holds a slight, somewhat twisted ladder. The other is empty, claws open.” Its title alludes to the biblical theme of human aspiration and the pursuit of higher goals; its location in a library devoted primarily to African American study adds to its meaning.

Works Created in Two Studios and Metal Factory

Hunt acquired his mid-North Side Chicago studio in 1971. The building used to serve as an electrical substation generating power for Chicago’s trolley lines. When the artist moved in, it already had a full-sized crane and load-bearing support system in place. Hunt has opened his studio to visitors in an effort to make his works more accessible to the public. Some of his larger pieces have actually outgrown the studio. Freeform, a three-ton stainless steel sculpture, had to be completed at a Michigan-based machine fabricating site. Hunt has also utilized the technical expertise of the workers at Bert Jensen and Sons metal fabricating factory in Racine, Wisconsin. And in the 1990s, the sculptor began to spend more time outside Chicago at his farmhouse in nearby McHenry County. He works on smaller scale pieces there, including models for his larger public commissions and architectural designs of settings for his works.

Interpreted Nature Using Industrial Techniques

Hunt’s techniques for creating welded metal sculptures are, in his words, “more or less industrial.” He is on record as stating that he was always interested in the relation between those techniques—cutting, burning, and beating the metal and often treating it with acid—and natural organic imagery. Hunt told the Smithsonian: “Artists no longer must imitate nature, but are free to interpret it. Sometimes I try to develop forms nature might create if only heat and steel were available to her.”

Responding to a recent catalog essay that called his work “life-affirming” because of its use of natural forms, Hunt told the Chicago Tribune, “I like the use of ‘life-affirming.’ That’s what I think sculpture, and art in general, should be about. I think of my work as a celebration of life in form. In my case, it’s achieved through welded or cast metal.”

A comparative exhibit titled “Richmond Barthé and Richard Hunt: Two Sculptors, Two Eras,” toured selected cities in the United States in 1992 and 1993. The show brought together Hunt’s works with those of Harlem Renaissance artist/sculptor Barthé, a traditionalist who attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago 30 years before Hunt. Several art critics and observers point to a correspondence in the form and content of the artists’ works—especially in their renderings of themes central to the African American experience. Alan G. Artner commented in the Chicago Tribune: “Barthé’s figurative work and Hunt’s abstractions are, of course, dissimilar. But … it appears as if the younger man is paying homage to the older with semi-abstractions that seem to take off from [Barthé’s originals].”

Selected works

Extending Horizontal Form, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, 1958.

I Have Been to the Mountain, Memphis, TN, 1977.

Jacob’s Ladder, Carter G. Woodson Regional Library, Chicago, IL, 1977.

Eagle Column, Jonquil Park, Chicago, IL, 1989.

Freedmen‘s Column, Howard University, Washington, DC, 1989.

Wisdom Bridge, Atlanta-Fulton Public Library, 1990.

Freeform, State of Illinois Center, Chicago, 1993.

Sources

Books

Contemporary Artists, edited by Colin Naylor, St. James Press, 1989.

Periodicals

Art in America, October 1984, p. 193; July 1993, p. 109.

ARTnews, Summer 1969; May 1983, p. 160.

Arts Magazine, April 1962, p. 53.

Chicago Tribune, October 23, 1989, sec. 2C, p. 1; February 28, 1991, sec. 1, p. 22; May 31, 1991, sec. 7, p. 72; August 11, 1991, sec. 18NW, p. 1; July 31, 1992, sec. 7, p. 69.

Ebony, August 1983, p. 180; August 1991, p. 6.

New York Times, September 30, 1958; May 18, 1968; April 19, 1969; April 27, 1969; April 14, 1989, p. C25.

Smithsonian, July 1990, p. 60.

Washington Post, January 15, 1993, sec. WW, p. 53.

—David Bianco