Art + Design 
21 April 2022
Art + Design 
146

Hans Breder 1935–2017

Untitled (from the Body/Sculpture series)

1969
photograph on sensitized canvas 45 h × 45 w in (114 × 114 cm)
estimate: $6,000–8,000
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Signed and dated to underside edge ‘HB 69’. This is the only example of this work printed in this unique size.
provenance: The Artist | Private Collection

This work will ship from Wright in Chicago, Illinois.

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The Body of Work

Hans Breder, Ana Mendieta, and the Body/Sculpture Series

Hans Breder, La Ventosa (Ana Mendieta) (1973)


German-born artist Hans Breder emigrated to New York in 1964, where he took up work as assistant to the sculptor George Rickey. After his successful solo show of sculpture at Richard Feigen Gallery in 1967, Breder accepted a professorship at the University of Iowa and went on to found the school's cutting-edge Intermedia and Video Art Program. 

When Breder met a 20-year-old Ana Mendieta in 1969, he had already experimented with the insertion of mirrors into photographic works, a technique that served to fragment and disorient both the image's subject and its viewer. His encounter with Mendieta, however, would prove pivotal to both artists' works. Their earliest collaboration was Breder's Body/Sculpture series, which he created with Mendieta and other models from 1969–1973.

The Body/Sculpture series served as a shared beginning of sorts for Breder and Mendieta, whose partnership was both creative and romantic. The pair traveled to Mexico annually, and Breder helped to create some of Mendieta's early celebrated works merging performance, land art, and image-making. The works that the pair created while in each other's orbit were the subject of the 2008 exhibition Converge: Works by Ana Mendieta and Hans Breder, 1970–1980 at Galerie Lelong; as the gallery's text summarized, "Both Breder and Mendieta were attracted to transformation, the body, and a hybrid of process and product." 

Hans Breder 1935–2017

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German-American artist Hans Breder is celebrated as an artist and educator whose expanded conceptualization both disciplines led to the historically significant Intermedia program at the University of Iowa. Born in 1935 in Herford, Germany, Breder studied painting at Hamburg’s University of Fine Arts and, in 1964, received a scholarship to study art in New York City, where he became an assistant to George Rickey.

While the minimalist sculptures that Breder was creating in New York were beginning to receive attention, Breder’s friend Ulfert Wilke, then director at the University of Iowa Museum of Art, recommended him for a faculty position in the art department. In 1966, Breder joined the university to offer a course in experimental drawing, and would go on to teach at the university until his retirement in 2000.

Shortly after joining the University of Iowa, Breder proposed the establishment of the Intermedia Program within the School of Art and Art History. The program, which was meant to center around the artist moreso than the art object, was formally approved in 1968. As Breder himself described it, “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." Notable artists who received Intermedia degrees include Ana Mendieta, Karen Gunderson, and Charles Ray. Indeed, Breder and Mendieta maintained a ten-year romantic relationship and together created the notable Ventosa series of photographs.

Breder’s work was featured in three Whitney Biennials, in 1987, 1989, and 1991, and he is included in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Auction Results Hans Breder

Hans Breder

Two works from La ventosa (Ana Mendieta)

estimate: $1,200–1,800

result: $11,970

Hans Breder

Two works from Coralville Studio

estimate: $1,000–1,500

result: $11,790

Hans Breder

Three works from Old Man's Creek

estimate: $1,000–2,000

result: $7,560

Hans Breder

Three works from the Old Man's Creek portfolio

estimate: $1,500–2,500

result: $2,451

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