David Hammons (artist)

David Hammons (born July 24, 1943 in Springfield , Illinois ) is an American artist from New York .

Shaped by the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Hammons repeatedly addresses political, social and economic grievances in his works. Not noticed by the art world until late, he was u. a. known for his painting of a white-faced Jesse Jackson in 1989 and his participation in Documenta IX in 1992.

Rooted in America's black urban culture, the street is David Hammons' main source of inspiration. One of his works is the "Bliz-aard Ball Sale", 1983, in which he is a street vendor in New York selling snowballs in various sizes. He declares chicken drumsticks, wire spools, broken pieces, dung and spades to be works of art, whether it's hair from hairdressing salons, ice blocks thawing in gallery rooms, or basketballs that he throws on paper webs where the dust leaves Harlem's drawings. By consciously choosing found objects and cheap materials, he draws on strategies from Arte Povera, among other things, which is one of the art movements in whose tradition he sees himself.

His work has been exhibited worldwide since the late 1970s, including solo exhibitions at Hauser & Wirth in Zurich (2003), the Kunsthalle Bern (1998), the Salzburger Kunstverein (1995), the Illinois State Museum, Springfield (1993), im San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1993), in the American Academy in Rome (together with Jannis Kounellis, 1992), in the PS1 Museum of Contemporary Art (1990).

In 2007 he took part in the Skulptur.Projekte in Münster.

David Hammons received the MacArthur Fellowship in 1991 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008. He is also a Prix ​​de Rome prize winner.

Web links

• David Hammons at Hauser & Wirth Zurich London ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• Materials by and about David Hammons (artist) in the documenta archive