Richard Hunt (born September 12, 1935) is an American sculptor. In the second half of the 20th century, he became "the foremost African-American abstract sculptor and artist of public sculpture." Hunt, the descendant of enslaved people brought through the port of Savannah from West Africa, studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1950s, and while there received multiple prizes for his work. He was the first African American sculptor to have a retrospective at Museum of Modern Art in 1971. Hunt has created over 160 public sculpture commissions in prominent locations in 24 states across the United States, more than any other sculptor.
With a career that spans seven decades, Hunt has held over 150 solo exhibitions and is represented in more than 100 public museums across the world. Hunt has served on the Smithsonian Institution's National Board of Directors. Hunt's abstract, modern and contemporary sculpture work is notable for its presence in exhibitions and public displays as early as the 1950s, despite social pressures for the obstruction of African-American art at the time. Barack Obama said "Richard Hunt is one of the greatest artists Chicago has ever produced."
Early life
Hunt was born in 1935 in the neighborhood of Woodlawn on Chicago's South Side. Hunt and his younger sister Marian grew up in South Side Chicago, but moved to Galesburg, Illinois at eleven years old where he spent the majority of his time in the city of Chicago. From an early age he was interested in the arts, as his mother, a beautician and librarian, would bring him to performances by local opera companies that sang classical repertoires of Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, and Handel. As a young boy, Hunt began to show enthusiasm and talent in artistic disciplines such as drawing and painting, and also sculpture, an interest that grew more and more as he got older. Hunt was inspired to pursue his career in the arts because his family appreciated art and he clearly said "My mom was supportive and dad was tolerant." In the seventh grade, Hunt attended the Junior School of Art Institute of Chicago where he began his interest in art. Hunt also acquired business sense and awareness of social issues from working for his father in a barbershop.
As a teenager, Hunt began his work in sculpture, working in clay and carvings. While his work started in a makeshift studio in his 1950 bedroom, he eventually built a basement studio in his father's barbershop.
Education
Hunt graduated from Englewood High School in 1953 and entered the School of the Art Institute of Chicago that year. He was once interested in Surrealism where he experimented with the assemblage of broken machine parts and metals from the junkyard such as car bumpers and reshaping them into organic forms. Hunt worked with materials of copper, iron and then to steel and aluminum which led to him to produce a series of "hybrid figures" which were references to human, animal and plant forms. This is where Hunt attains a combination of organic and industrial subject matter in his artwork. Hunt studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1953 to 1957, focusing on welding sculptures, but also studying lithography. His earliest works were more figural than his later ones, and usually represented classical themes. Hunt began exhibiting his sculptures nationwide while still a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As a Junior, his piece "Arachne," was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He received a B.A.E. from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1957.
Emmett Till
In 1955, Hunt attended the funeral of Emmett Till at the Roberts Temple Church in Chicago. The open casket funeral meant Till's face, mutilated and disfigured from having been lynched, was in full view. This experience had a profound impact on Richard Hunt. Till had grown up in Woodlawn only 2 blocks away from the home where Hunt was born. Hunt, like Till, traveled South to visit family. The sculpture "Hero's Head", 1956 (representing the lynched head of Till) was one of the first welded sculptures that Hunt would begin creating after teaching himself how to weld the very same summer that he witnessed the Till's funeral. On January 6, 2003, Hunt would also attend Mamie Till's funeral out of reverence for what she did for her child and for the Civil Rights movement as a whole.