Hans Breder

Hans Breder
Hans Breder, 2012
Born
Hans Dieter Breder

(1935-10-20)October 20, 1935
Herford, Germany
DiedJune 18, 2017(2017-06-18) (aged 81)
Iowa City, Iowa, United States
EducationHochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg in Hamburg.
Known forIntermedia, Sculpture, Painting, Video art
SpouseBarbara Welch Breder

Hans Dieter Breder (October 20, 1935 – June 18, 2017) was a German-American interdisciplinary artist. He lived and worked in Iowa.

Early life

Breder studied painting under Willem Grimm at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and received a scholarship from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes to study art in New York City in 1964. Once in the U.S. he worked as an assistant to the sculptor George Rickey.

Space-Time (1964) Hans Breder
Boxed-In (1993) Intermedia Performance
Jetztzeit, video installation still, 2012

Career

Breder taught as an art professor at the University of Iowa from 1966 to 2000. In 1968 he founded the Intermedia program at Iowa, notable alumni include Karen Gunderson (artist) Gunderson was the first person to graduate with a degree in Intermedia in the country under his program in 1968. Gunderson has often said "she didn't think she could have gotten to her way of painting with the black paint if she hadn't learned to think as an intermedia artist." Other artists include Ana Mendieta and Charles Ray. Visiting Artists to the program included Hans Haacke, Allan Kaprow, Willoughby Sharp, Robert Wilson, Vito Acconci, Elaine Summers, Nam June Paik, Dennis Oppenheim, Carolee Schneemann, Karen Finley, Ben Vautier, George Kuchar, Yvonne Rainer, Trinh Minh-ha, Donald Kuspit, Roselee Goldberg, John Hanhardt, Barbara London, and many others. Breder received an Honorary Doctorate from the Technische Universität Dortmund in 2007 and retired as F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Art in 2000.

Intermedia Program

In an effort to create a position opposed to increased specialization and limited interdisciplinary experience, Breder proposed the Intermedia Program in the School of Art and Art History at the University of Iowa in 1967–1968 and it was approved in 1968. The focus was to be artist-oriented rather than art-oriented, in order to emphasize the belief that artistic creativity is a continual challenge. Therefore, intentionally, "no overall intermedia 'style' or philosophy is created."

"My program conceived of intermedia not as interdisciplinary fusing of different fields into one, but as a constant collision of concepts and disciplines. It was performance-oriented, and video was an inherent aspect. Although initially used in a documentary mode, video almost immediately became an integral aspect of many student performances and was soon used as a medium in its own right."

Breder further explained his intermedia concept in the September, 2012 issue of Artforum: "..Digital technology allows me to excavate new worlds of microcosmic event horizons. in Herodias, 2011, I aim for a dematerialization of content by entering into the microstructure of sound and imagery; I seek the immaterial or what in physics people speak of as ephemeral phenomena that cannot be reduced to mere things. The radically microcosmic experience creates an effect that is at once both abstract and real."

Exhibitions

Breder's works have been presented in numerous exhibitions in the United States and internationally. He was exhibited with the Richard Feigen Gallery (1967-1972), the Mitchell Algus Gallery, and Hachmeister Gallery. He was included in Kineticism: System Sculpture in Environmental situations, (Official Olympic Games Exhibition), University Museum of Arts and Science, Mexico City, Mexico (1968); Painting Beyond the Death of Painting: Imagistic and Abstract Work, the first group exhibition of American Art at Kuznetzky Most Exhibition Hall, Moscow, USSR (1989); An American Odyssey 1945/1980, Circolo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain (2004); Ana Mendieta and Hans Breder: Converge, Lelong Galerie, New York (2008), Mind's Mirror', Ethan Cohen Gallery, New York (2014), ...Inmixing: A Survey of Works from 1964 to Present, WhiteBox, New York (2009-2010), Kollisions Felder (Collision Fields), Museum Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany (2013). He was a participant in the Whitney Biennial Exhibition in 1987, 1989, and 1991. Among the institutions his work has been collected by are the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. His Intermedia Archive is installed permanently at the Museum Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany.

Personal life

During the 1970s, Breder had a personal and artistic relationship with Ana Mendieta, who studied in the Intermedia Program he founded at the University of Iowa. Art historian Julia P. Herzberg describes Breder as Mendieta's "companion, confidant, and mentor", whose influence encouraged her interest in performance, conceptual art, and multimedia work. Mendieta spent numerous summers in Mexico during this period, where she experienced important developments in her work. Breder sometimes assisted with and documented her work. Robert Katz describes an early performance in Oaxaca in which Breder, following Mendieta's instructions, helped arrange a sheet around her body and photographed the resulting work with a 35 mm camera.

Since 1984, Breder was married to Barbara Welch Breder who lectured on the critical history of advertising and consumer culture in the University of Iowa's Department of Communication Studies for nearly three decades. She also created the Iowa City Yoga Center (1975–2000).

Breder died in Iowa City, Iowa on June 18, 2017.

References

  1. ↑ "Hans Breder CV, White Box New York" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-10-24.[permanent dead link]
  2. ↑ "Hans Breder Faculty Profile". Retrieved 2012-10-24.
  3. ↑ "Hans Breder, March 16-April 14, 2012 Text, Algus Greenspon Gallery". Archived from the original on September 23, 2012. Retrieved 2012-10-24.
  4. ↑ "Intermedia Visiting Artists 1969". Archived from the original on 2012-03-29.
  5. 1 2 Breder, Hans; Rapaport, Herman (September 2011). "Intermedia: A Consciousness-based Process". PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. 33 (3): 11–23. doi:10.1162/PAJJ_a_00051. S2CID 57560791.
  6. ↑ "Hans Breder, INMIXING: A Survey of Works from 1964 – Present, ArtCAT, 2010".
  7. 1 2 "Breder CV, White Box New York" (PDF).[permanent dead link]
  8. ↑ "Statement". Archived from the original on 2008-11-21. Retrieved 2012-12-12.
  9. 1 2 Hans Breder, Artforum, September, 2012, Vol. 51, No. 1, p. 501
  10. ↑ Cotter, Holland (July 16, 2004). "ART IN REVIEW; Hans Breder, New York Times, July 16, 2004". The New York Times.
  11. ↑ "Hachmeister Gallery, Hans Breder". Archived from the original on 2014-09-20. Retrieved 2012-10-24.
  12. ↑ "Kollisions Felder, Hans Breder, February 1, 2013-April 1, 2013" (PDF).
  13. ↑ Herzberg, Julia P. (2004). "Ana Mendieta's Iowa Years 1970–1980". In Viso, Olga M. (ed.). Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance. Washington, D.C.: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution. pp. 137–179. His influence on Mendieta was both personal and professional. During their decade-long love affair that began in 1970, Breder became her companion, confidant, and mentor, inspiring her enthusiasm for performance, conceptual art, and multimedia work.
  14. ↑ Katz, Robert (1990). Naked by the Window: The Fatal Marriage of Carl Andre and Ana Mendieta. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. pp. 15–16. When she used to spend the summers in Mexico with Hans ... Hans, following her instructions, covered her body with the bedsheet ... and shot a roll of 35 mm color film.
  15. ↑ "Barbara Welch-Breder".
  16. ↑ Hans Breder, Who Created a New Frontier, Breaking Artistic Boundaries, Dies at 81