Richard Hunt used “industrial materials and modern methods to sculpt organic forms and historical archetypes, such as freedom, flight, and progress” throughout his career.

Accompanying his mother, a beautician and librarian, he attended performances by local opera companies that sang classical repertoires of Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, and Handel.

[19] Interested in Modernism, Abstract Expressionism, and Surrealism, he experimented with the assemblage of broken machine parts, car bumpers, and metals from the junkyard reshaping them into organic forms.

[20] Hunt went on to work with iron, steel, copper, and aluminum producing a series of "hybrid figures", references to human, animal, and plant forms.

[11] On March 7, 1960, Mary Andrews, president of the local youth council of the NAACP, wrote letters to store managers in downtown San Antonio, Texas, who operated white-only lunch counters.

Hunt, the only known African American to eat at San Antonio's Woolworth's lunch counter that day, fulfilled Mary Andrews's vision of integration.

[31] The Sculpture of the Twentieth Century included works of Pablo Picasso, Julio González, David Smith, Constantin Brancusi, Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick, Alberto Giacometti, Umberto Boccioni, and Jean Arp.

Following the influence of Julio González, Hunt’s “drawing in space” sculptures pushed the limits of metals’ tensile strength to create delicate and expansive linear forms.

"[38] Seeking a more direct connection with nature, Hunt bought a farmhouse on 26 acres in McHenry County, Illinois, in 1974, while continuing to maintain his Lill Avenue studio in Chicago.

He built the sculpture from found objects, including several mufflers, collected from the street and in metal scrap yards, and welded them together to create a humanoid form with a pose that alludes to a figure of a heroic status.

[33] Linear Peregrination, 1962 Hunt’s work with welded steel sculpture is highlighted by his ability to manipulate the material in order to create organic and dynamic forms.

[60] Hunt’s work alludes to Hawthorne’s tale about a utopian commune that is ruined by its members' greed and selfishness, as well as the contrasting narratives of life in the city and in the country.

[2] Out and Further Out, 2018 Out and Further Out represents Hunt’s artistic aspiration to push the limits of gravity and material, extending the bronze tendril-like forms horizontally reaching out from a solid columnar base.

[64] He also created monuments for some of the United States' greatest heroes, including Martin Luther King Jr., Mary McLeod Bethune, John Jones, Jesse Owens, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Hobart Taylor Jr.[16] Play, 1969 Hunt received his first sculpture commission in 1967 known as Play, which was commissioned by the State of Illinois Public Art Program for the John J. Madden Health Center in Maywood, Illinois.

And the other block growing out of his shoulder to show how his burden held him down at the same time he was trying to climb.”[77] John Jones was initially installed on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle.

It suggests a sort of altar that Jacob built after having his dream.”[79] I Have Been to the Mountain, 1977 In 1977, on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Hunt was commissioned by the Mallory Knights Charitable Organization to make a sculpture memorializing his life.

[2] The large steel forms of the piece symbolize a mountain range, and a metaphor for King’s activism and message about reaching the archetypal promised land, where Black people will live in peace and have equal rights.

It reflects the trials and tribulations that African-Americans dealt with on their road to obtaining liberation and civil rights, as well as the idea of “freedom of mind, thought, and imagination.

The Greek myth of Prometheus, who brought civilization to humans by stealing fire from the gods, leading to him being eternally condemned by Zeus, is a metaphor for Till’s suffering at the hands of white supremacy.

[94] In 1965, Hunt was a resident artist at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, where he worked with master printer Kenneth Tyler, and produced a series of 8 lithographs which he titled Details.

Larger volumes are balanced by soaring, tapered lines, or an asymmetrical axis supports the suggestion of radiating forms in transition.”[104] Hunt had subsequent exhibitions at Alan Gallery in 1960 and 1963.

[64] Richard Hunt's major exhibition at White Cube New York in the spring of 2024, focused on the formative period of 1955 through 1969, when he established himself as a leading American artist.

The pairing shows how Hunt’s two-dimensional and three-dimensional work share a unique aesthetic dialogue of organic forms, scale, and open space.

The exhibition combines art, archives, and artifacts from Hunt’s life and career, with a focus on his contribution to the Civil Rights Movement, as well as his status as one of the major 20th century American artists.

[142][16] The Richard Hunt archive contains approximately 800 linear feet of detailed notes and correspondence, notebooks, sketchbooks, photographic documentation, financial records, research, ephemera, blueprints, posters, drawings, and lithographs, as well as a selection of wax models for public sculptures.

[143] Gallery director Sukanya Rajaratnam proclaimed that “Richard has been a giant hiding in plain sight for decades…his ability to thread the history of twentieth-century sculpture, with his own deeply personal experience as a Black man is nothing short of profound.”[144] A solo exhibition is planned for White Cube’s Bermondsey location in 2025.

A sculptural grave marker he designed as a maquette, called Spirits Ascending will be completed by his studio, as a large bronze memorial, and placed at the gravesite.

As an African American living in the United States, obviously issues like segregation laws, the civil rights movement in the 1960s or South Africa have been on my mind when I have dealt with the concept of freedom.

Wells is a 2024 feature length documentary film, directed by Rana Segal, about Richard Hunt’s public sculpture honoring the life and achievements of civil rights activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

The text includes an introduction by Courtney J. Martin, essays by John Yau, Jordan Carter, and LeRonn P. Brooks, an interview by Adrienne Childs, and a chronology by Jon Ott, who is Hunt’s official biographer[170] Oprah Daily declared it as "A lavish, trenchant retrospective of our most prominent Black sculptors.