There are over 30 major works, spanning more than six decades, which forge together Richard Hunt: Metamorphosis – A Retrospective. Each is a monument, not of conquest, but of progress; their limbs twist, contort, writhe and undulate in a bid to reckon with the past and beckon to the present. These gestures are amplified by the relentless lighting that breathes heavily upon them from above. Some might say the works are recognisable because they surround us, they replicate natural expressions and cadences, the fictitious narratives of Greek and Roman antiquity, the artist’s cultural heritage and international escapades, the vocabulary of European modernism, as well as the legacy of African American civil rights campaigners. To put it in more decisive terms, the entities which populate Metamorphosis are personal to Richard Hunt as much as they are universal to an observer.
“It seems to me, that the seeds of artistic revolution sown, grown and reaped during the last fifty years should see the rich fruits of their harvest nurture a new art in this wiser half century,” Hunt wrote in 1957. “An art which need not seek strength in revolt, but in the creative pulse of its makers; an art having sinew and gut, as well as heart and soft flesh.” The anatomy of Hunt’s works reflects upon this, especially Hero’s Head (1956), one of his earliest mature creations and the first among numerous pieces committed to the legacy of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American whose callous lynching in the summer of 1955 catalysed a tremulous moment in American history. At 19, Hunt was amongst the 100,000 mourners present at Till’s open-casket visitation. Hero’s Head is intentionally measured to reflect the diameters of a human head and rests upon a stainless-steel plinth. Its inclusion reiterates that Hunt’s youth had been influenced by the age it existed within. Comparably to the way in which the age he spent in the art space was influenced by his youth.
Hunt also developed a fleeting affinity for marrying metal and wood together for those conceived in the mid-1950s, such as Construction N and Construction S (both 1956). This was later forfeited in his pursuit of a solely metal approach. His preference stemmed from its potential for linearity, adaptability and structural vigour. Ultimately the open-formed beings that emerged from this probing reflected Hunt’s deepening relationship with the sentimental possibility of line, manifesting as 3D compositions in space. Opposed Linear Forms (1961), Linear Peregrination (1962) and Line Sequence (1962), all of which sit in South Gallery I, openly commentate on the artist’s continuous magnetism to Greek and Roman folklore. What remains more subtle is the opportunity each provides for an immersion into either escapism or realism, the Black fantasy, or the Black reality.
Other pieces such Coil (1965) and Tube Form (1966) play upon the visual association of the organic with the industrial; the former, which had been moulded from salvaged copper coil, impersonates a meandering serpent-like profile whilst the latter, this time realised in welded aluminium, bears a close resemblance to the blue dasher dragonfly. By the second half of the decade, Hunt’s consideration of linear-spatial augmentation started to transition to a more pronounced emphasis on volumetric self-contained bodies.
Two years after Hunt lifted the curtain on his inaugural public commission, Play in Chicago (1969), the artist, at the age of 35, became one of the youngest, and the first African American sculptor, to be recognised with a survey exhibition at MoMA. During that time, he transitioned to a contemporary studio on West Lill Avenue in Chicago which served the purpose of giving more room to his increasingly bigger creations. With them, Hunt welcomed a more far-reaching visual language, which he depended upon for an individual nod to prominent African American individuals and leaders within the Civil Rights Movement. Two bronze sculptures within South Gallery II, Roman Hybrid and Half Circle Runner (both 1979), memorialise Olympic titan and civil rights campaigner Jesse Owens in the aftermath of his receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976.
Everything culminates in Steel Garden (2013), created by Hunt in his final decade. Positioned prominently in the courtyard, it serves as a fitting curtain call for the exhibition. The choice of this piece feels deliberate; like many of the works on display, it’s been made for a moment that it continues to exist beyond.
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The first London retrospective of work by Richard Hunt (1935–2023) opened at White Cube Bermondsey in April 2025.
Sabrina Roman is a writer based in London.
