Richard Hunt’s sculptures are all over the city of Chicago – at McCormick Place, Midway Airport, and too many more locations to list) – and they’re all around the country too. With over 160 installations, Hunt is one of the most prolific creators of public art in America.
He passed away on Saturday. He was 88 years old.
In this episode, his friend and biographer Jon Ott explains why Hunt – born in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood in 1935 – was “one of the most important figures in art history.”
“He was using the industrial materials of the time,” Ott said. “Being one of the first artists in the direct metal welding technique that he used to create assemblage art out of discarded bumpers, steel parts, aluminum, copper.”
Ott tells us about Hunt’s upbringing on the South Side, his unexpected scholarship to the School of the Art Institute, and how the death of Emmett Till – who lived just two blocks from Hunt’s childhood home – profoundly changed his art.
