Richard hunt sculpture biography

For nearly five decades, Hunt ranked among the foremost American sculptors. His abstract creations, executed in welded and cast steel, aluminum, copper, and bronze, make frequent reference to plant, human, and animal forms. Hunt self-identified as a "Midwestern sculptor," and he remained famously committed to his hometown of Chicago, where he made his life and career.

Charles C. Hunt was born on September 12, , the younger of two children of Howard and Inez Henderson Hunt, a barber and a librarian respectively who lived on Chicago's predominantly Black South Side.

Richard hunt book bird

Both of Hunt's parents provided formative influences during his childhood. He acquired an early interest in politics from conversations he overheard while working in his father's barbershop. His mother instilled a love of reading and classical music and took him to local Black opera companies. Hunt began drawing as a child, and he enrolled in a summer program at the Junior School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he received his initial training in sculpture under Nelli Bar.

In , Hunt set up a studio in his bedroom and began to model in clay. Within two years Hunt had taught himself the welded-metal technique. In , Hunt attended the open-casket funeral of Emmett Till, the young Black Chicago native who was murdered and mutilated by white men, a searingly transformational experience that fortified his social and racial consciousness.