Richard Hunt, Bermondsey (2025)
Richard Hunt
Metamorphosis – A Retrospective
25 April – 29 June 2025
Dates
25 April – 29 June 2025
Preview: 24 April 2025, 6.30–8 pm
Conversations: Mark Godfrey and Jon Ott on Richard Hunt, 5.30 – 6.30 pm (RSVP)
The first London retrospective of work by Richard Hunt (1935–2023), one of the foremost American sculptors of the 20th and 21st centuries, opens at White Cube Bermondsey in April 2025.
Over a seven decade-long career, Hunt staged more than 170 solo shows and completed over 160 large-scale public sculpture commissions worldwide. In 1971, at the age of 35, he achieved a historic milestone as the first African American sculptor to receive a retrospective at New York’s MoMA.
Working predominantly in metal, Hunt was profoundly inspired by biological science and the natural world. His hybrid sculptures are characterised by dualities, that of the natural and the industrial, the surreal and the abstract, the geometric and the organic.
Throughout his career, the late artist paid tribute to some of America’s greatest heroes in his work, including Martin Luther King Jr., Mary McLeod Bethune, Jesse Owens and Hobart Taylor Jr. In 2022, he was commissioned by Barack Obama to create a work for the Obama Presidential Centre, located in the artist’s hometown of Chicago.
Upcoming Event
Conversations: Mark Godfrey and Jon Ott on Richard Hunt
5.30 – 6.30 pm
24 April 2025
White Cube Bermondsey
To celebrate the opening of Richard Hunt’s exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey, art historian, critic, and curator Mark Godfrey will join Richard Hunt's biographer, Jon Ott, in conversation from the gallery.
To learn more about Richard Hunt
Listen: Artists, Curators and Writers discuss Richard Hunt
Thelma Golden
Director and Chief Curator, Studio Museum in Harlem
Thelma Golden first discovered Richard Hunt early in her career as an intern at the Studio Museum in Harlem, where she now serves as director. She discusses the artist’s support of her work as an African American curator, and his drive to create and innovate with his art.
LeRonn P. Brooks, PhD
Curator of the African American, Art History Initiative
Modern and Contemporary Collections, Getty Research Institute
Brooks reflects on his first meeting with Richard Hunt, and the cultural and social context in which he created his radical sculpture.
Kennedy Yanko
Artist
Yanko discusses parallels between her own practice and Richard Hunt’s use of metal, reminiscing on first meeting the artist in 2019.
Richard Hunt grinding at his Cleveland Ave. studio in Chicago, 1962. © 2024 The Richard Hunt Trust / ARS, NY and DACS, London
Hunt standing with Opposed Linear Forms (1961), behind left, and Organic Construction, Number 3 (1961) far right, at B.C. Holland Gallery, Chicago, 1962. © Don Sparks. Graphics Mike Sparks. © 2024 The Richard Hunt Trust / ARS, NY and DACS, London
Richard Hunt seated at Mill Race Studio, San Antonio, beside Longhorn (1959, dismantled 1960). © Martha Mood © 2024 The Richard Hunt Trust / ARS, NY and DACS, London
Publication
Richard Hunt ‘Early Masterworks’
Published following Richard Hunt’s (1935–2023) exhibition of early sculptures at White Cube New York, this catalogue marks the largest presentation of Hunt’s works in New York since his landmark retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1971. Featuring sculptures created between 1955 and 1969, this publication showcases the intricacy of Hunt’s metalsmithing techniques and the evolution of his biomorphic forms.
Richard Hunt
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