Untitled (Standing Figure)

As a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the mid-1950s, Richard Hunt created dozens of soldered wire sculptures like this one showing single figures as well as groups of two or three engaged in various activities. Casually referred to by the artist as his “little soldered wire things,” these intimate handmade works collapse the categories of drawing and sculpture, using line to articulate bodies that stand in contemplation, stride on their pedestals, and even ride unicycles in some of the more complex constructions. “I was . . . just making sculpture on my own in a place I set up in my parents’ basement,” Hunt recalled. “And first was the soldering, and I would show things like that in art fairs . . . [a]nd then from the success of selling soldered things, I was able to buy some welding equipment. So I set that up in my parents’ basement.” The artist used this equipment to make increasingly large-scale works such as Hero Construction (1958), on view on the Women’s Board Grand Staircase. As the wire sculptures have aged, they have taken on accretions that the artist let accumulate, indicating the sculptures’ histories as objects that have lived in the world.