Richard Hunt

Richard Hunt loved to draw as a child and was steered to sculpture by a teacher who sensed what came to be true: that once Hunt experienced creating in three dimensions, he would never go back to two.

After Hunt graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the James Nelson Raymond Foreign Travel Fellowship made it possible for him to spend a year studying in Europe. He became, at the age of 35, the first African-American sculptor to have a major solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in 1971.

Among the other museums at which Hunt has had exhibitions are the Cleveland Museum of Art, Milwaukee Art Center, Art Institute of Chicago, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Museum of African-American History in Detroit, and Oklahoma Art Center. The public enjoys more than 100 of his abstract expressionist works in cities and towns, on schools and campuses across the United States.

Today, Hunt works in a studio on Chicago’s North Side that was once a train system substation — a space big enough to accommodate the monumental works of art that are his specialty.

In recognition of his remarkable career and accomplishments, Hunt was awarded the International Sculpture Center’s Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award in 2009.  

Hunt's website: www.richardhunt.us