The Institute of Contemporary Art Miami is presenting the first major institutional survey of renowned sculptor Richard Hunt since his death in 2023, showcasing the groundbreaking work of one of America's most prolific public artists. The exhibition, titled "Richard Hunt: Pressure," features 28 sculptures created between 1955 and 2010, representing one of the largest gatherings of Hunt's work ever assembled. The show opens during Miami Art Week and runs through March, offering an unprecedented opportunity to examine the seven-decade career of an artist who completed more than 160 public sculpture commissions across 24 states and Washington, D.C.

The concept of "pressure" was fundamental to Hunt's artistic philosophy, as he once wrote in his notebook: "The material basis of my sculpture is metallic opportunities. Bringing pressure to the right points, I draw the aesthetic out of the industrial process." Co-curator Gean Moreno explains that the exhibition's title carries dual meaning - representing both the literal physical pressure Hunt applied to create his metal sculptures, particularly in his 1960s works, and the societal pressures he faced as an African American artist trying to balance formal innovation with social consciousness during the Civil Rights era.

Hunt's artistic journey was profoundly shaped by personal tragedy and social injustice. Growing up on Chicago's South Side, he lived just blocks from Emmett Till, the 14-year-old boy brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955. Hunt, then nearly 20, attended Till's open-casket funeral organized by the boy's mother, Mamie Till, to expose the violence inflicted on her son. This traumatic experience shifted Hunt toward abstract, surrealist-influenced work as a means of processing the horror he witnessed. In 1956, he created "Hero's Head," a scarred welded sculpture dedicated to Till's memory.

The impact of Till's lynching remained with Hunt throughout his life, influencing both his artistic practice and his activism. He participated in civil rights demonstrations, including integrating a Woolworth's lunch counter in San Antonio, Texas, in 1960. Just before his death in 2023 at age 88, Hunt completed a model for a monument commemorating Emmett Till, which will be installed at Till's childhood home in Chicago. This commitment to memorial and commemoration became a defining aspect of Hunt's legacy, according to Howard University art historian Melanee Harvey, who uses Hunt's three campus sculptures as starting points for her African American art courses.

Born in 1935, Hunt spent his entire life in Chicago and discovered his calling after visiting the Art Institute of Chicago's 1953 "Sculpture of the Twentieth Century" exhibition, which featured works by Picasso and Giacometti. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, earning a bachelor's degree in arts education in 1957. That same year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired his 30-inch sculpture "Arachne" (1956), marking his entry into major museum collections. Remarkably, Hunt never formally learned welding at art school, representing what Jon Ott, executive director of the Richard Hunt Legacy Foundation and Hunt's official biographer, calls "an incredibly unique intersection of having a self-taught technique but being very educated in the Beaux Arts style."

Hunt's approach to addressing social issues through abstract forms was not always embraced by those who believed literal representation was more effective for advancing the Civil Rights Movement. However, Hunt was intentional about his methodology, telling the Washington Post in 1972: "I got interested in being an artist in 1955 when black people felt they had to be white in order to succeed and the movement that has affected the development of people's concern about being black wasn't evident. But there was certainly in terms of my development growing up in a black community in Chicago, a kind of black pride." The Post titled that article "Richard Hunt: A Black Artist Who Doesn't Do Black Art."

Hunt's transition into public sculpture began in 1969 when architect Walter Netsch commissioned him to create a work for a hospital outside Chicago. The resulting Cor-Ten steel sculpture, "Play," depicts two glob-like shapes with one towering over the other, inspired by demonstrators attacked by police dogs in Birmingham, Alabama, during the Civil Rights Movement. Hunt originally titled the work "The Chase," seeing it as representing pursuit, but Netsch requested a different title for the mental health facility. This project demonstrated that public art could have an abstract basis while still being transformative, which was groundbreaking at the time.

The influence of Constantin Brâncuși proved pivotal in Hunt's artistic development. In 1957, Hunt traveled to Paris shortly after Brâncuși's death and visited the Romanian sculptor's studio, which was maintained exactly as it was the day he died. Brâncuși's integration of life and art-making became a model for Hunt, who eventually purchased a decommissioned electrical plant to serve as his studio and living space, sleeping in a custom-built loft. As Moreno explains, "It was like he was never outside of the space and the materials and thinking of sculpture."

Hunt achieved his biggest breakthrough in 1971 with a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, making him the first African American sculptor to receive such recognition and, at the time, a rarity for a Chicago-based artist. This milestone launched decades of prolific public art creation, including major works such as "I Have Been to the Mountain" at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Reflection Park in Memphis, "Swing Low" at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and "Book Bird" at the upcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

Throughout his career, Hunt mounted over 170 solo exhibitions, and his work is now represented in more than 125 museums worldwide. Though his sculptures were abstract in form and sometimes challenging to interpret immediately, Hunt embraced the viewer's experience with his work. According to Ott, "He reveled in the various layers of interpretation and invited everyone in to see his work as part of a conversation." Hunt created a unique visual language that synthesized European modernism, African American history, and American abstraction, resulting in sculptures with spiritual qualities even when addressing secular topics.

The Miami exhibition provides Hunt with renewed exposure to the international art world during one of its most important weeks. As Ott notes, the timing "gives an opportunity for Hunt to be at the center of the art world in a way that he hasn't been before," potentially offering "a very well deserved and important introduction or reintroduction of his body of work to people from around the world." Hunt's legacy demonstrates how abstract forms can achieve both universality and specificity simultaneously, transcending societal limitations while maintaining deep cultural resonance. As Hunt once reflected, "Sometimes it is not about making art. Sometimes it is about making statements about culture and history or history and culture with and through art."