Military Service & Integration
"My career as a sculptor has led me to pursue a quest for freedom not unlike that day in San Antonio."
- Richard Hunt
Military Service
In 1958, Hunt returned from Europe to the United States to serve in the U.S. Army at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. Initially drafted as a medic, Hunt skillfully managed to negotiate a transfer to the role of illustrator, a position more aligned with his artistic aspirations. Recently gaining a foothold in the commercial art scene, he was fortunate enough to rent a house on the military base, typically reserved for non-commissioned officers. This achievement made him not only the sole private but also the first African American to integrate such quarters.
Hunt at work as a U.S. Army illustrator at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, 1959
Peaceful Integration
During his time in the army in San Antonio, Hunt stood firmly for justice and equality amidst the turbulent landscape of the Civil Rights Movement in a pivotal moment of peaceful protest. In the spring of 1960, near the conclusion of his military service, he, along with two white companions, entered a Woolworth's lunch counter in Alamo Plaza in San Antonio that was designated for white patrons.
Hunt's group calmly took their seats at the lunch counter without incident, engaging in a courageous act of conscience that defied the prejudices of the era. This action, along with those of a handful of other African Americans at lunch counters across the city, constituted the first peaceful and voluntary lunch-counter integration in the South. The experience ignited within Hunt a lifelong passion for the pursuit of freedom and equity for all, expressed through his art.
"Hunt desegregated a Woolworth’s lunch counter in San Antonio, Texas, and was demobbed early from the Army to pursue his artistic ambitions. Not yet twenty-five, he had already demonstrated the strength of character and forceful skill that would define his practice to the present."
- Courtney J. Martin, Executive Director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
Emergence of Organic Constructions
While fulfilling his military duties, Hunt continued to cultivate his sculptural practice, sharing a studio with a local painter. He began to explore innovative linear-spatial configurations using salvaged metal parts, merging artistry with resourcefulness. While there, he completed Longhorn (1959), a sculpture that prominently incorporates a chromed car bumper, among other metal parts salvaged from a local scrapyard.
After receiving an early discharge from the Army, he took apart several of his initial sculptures, including Longhorn, repurposing the materials to create new, hybrid forms that stretched into space, resembling three-dimensional drawings. This Organic Construction series, characterized by its open form, would evolve into some of the most significant sculptures of his early artistic career, embodying the intricate relationship between his experiences and his creative vision.
Hunt seated in Mill Race Studio, San Antonio, beside Longhorn (1959; dismantled 1960).