Duane Hanson

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Duane Hanson 1972

Duane Hanson (born January 17, 1925 in Alexandria , Minnesota , † January 6, 1996 in Boca Raton , Florida ) was an American artist and one of the most influential exponents of American sculpture and the founder of hyperrealism in the context of the pop art movement .

Life

Duane Hanson was the son of a farming family. He attended Luther College in Decorah (Iowa) and majored in art at the University of Washington from 1944 . In 1945/46 he was enrolled at Macalester College (BA 1946), where the sculptor Alonzo Hauser was one of his teachers. In 1947 H. continued his studies at the University of Minnesota , and in 1951 he received a Master of Fine Arts from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan . Here he met the Swedish sculptor Carl Milles . In 1952 he taught at Wilton Junior High School in Wilton / Connecticut and from 1953 in Europe at schools affiliated with the American Army. From 1953 to 1960 he lived in Germany, in Munich and Bremen. In 1961 he settled in Atlanta / Georgia and taught at Miami-Dade Community College from 1965 to 1969.

As early as the late 1960s, while still in his native Florida, he began making life-size human figures. With the help of the materials fiberglass and polyester resin , he reproduced every fold of the skin in great detail. When the figures were finished, Hanson completed them using real clothes, wigs and accessories. This created hyper-realistic scenes from everyday American life, a mirror of the “ American way of life ”.

From the beginning, Duane Hanson took up explosive issues in American society. In his installations, for example, he de-heroized war victims or critically addressed the public sanctions for abortions . His works often responded to what was going on outside of museums in American society. It seemed as if Hanson had brought a section of reality into the museum. This is also the case in connection with racial segregation in the southern United States in the year before the fatal assassination attempt on Martin Luther King : One of his most important works, Policeman and Rioter from 1967, shows a white policeman who beats a black man.

Man on a Bench (1977)

Other important topics and works are people on the street ( Bowery Relicts , 1969), people in consumption ( Florida Shopper , 1973), abused women, women cleaning and shopping ( Supermarket Lady , 1970), cleaning lady (1972, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart ), Woman with a Shoulder Bag (1974), Seated Child (1974, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen , Rotterdam). As an aspiring artist, Hanson moved to New York . Typical American problems - such as racial hatred and the consequences of the Vietnam War - found expression in his works. The attitude towards life in the USA at that time can be read almost frighteningly precisely from the faces of the middle class .

Duane Hanson was an important exponent of socially critical art. He showed no aversion to the people he portrayed, but displayed sympathy and empathy by depicting their resignation, tiredness and despair.

Even though his scenes are to a certain extent fiction , his work can be settled in the tradition of important representatives of " social documentary photography ", such as the photographer W. Eugene Smith .

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1972: Participant in Documenta 5 in Kassel in the Realism department
  • 1974: Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart: Duane Hanson. A retrospective.
  • 1990: Kunsthalle Tübingen , Duane Hanson. Sculptures , November 24, 1990 - February 10, 1991
  • 2001: Duane Hanson - More than Reality, Gallery of the City of Stuttgart / Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
  • 2010/2011: “Eerie Realities - Duane Hanson and Gregory Crewdson ” in the Museum Frieder Burda , Baden-Baden

literature

See also

Other artists who belong to the direction of hyperrealism:

Web links

Commons : Duane Hanson  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Duane Hanson , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 16/1996 of April 8, 1996, in the Munzinger Archive , accessed on April 22, 2014 ( beginning of the article freely available)
  2. ↑ SH: Duane Hanson . In: kunstmarkt.com. Without a date. Retrieved February 7, 2015.
  3. ↑ Duane Hanson at the Aachen Ludwigforum ( Memento from April 14, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Hanson, Duane
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American artist
DATE OF BIRTH January 17, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Alexandria , Minnesota
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1996
Place of death Boca Raton , Florida