EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND.- The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art presents "Duane Hanson - Sculptures of Life," on view through Sunday, 23 February, 2003. American artist Duane Hanson has long been known at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art for his realist sculpture Tourists. In its only UK showing, this exhibition will bring 31 of his extraordinary works to Edinburgh. Hanson cast his figures from life, and their realism and attention to detail can easily catch the viewer off-guard. His work provides us with a thought-provoking panorama of middle America in the late twentieth century.Duane Hanson was a former art professor at Oglethorpe University. Hanson’s super-realist sculptures are cast from human models and rendered in polyvinyl, auto body filler (bondo), or bronze. The "skin" of the sculptures is painted in such detail as to resemble human flesh. The sculptures are then finished with clothing, hair, jewelry and other accessories. The exhibition also features a maquette, or a proposed commission never completed, as well as items from the artist’s workshop including casts, chisels, brushes and items unique to his medium, such as eyeballs and teeth.
Hanson’s work has been featured in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, the Musee des Beaux Arts de Montreal, World Design Exposition in Nagoya, Japan, and in numerous other museums and galleries around the world. A traveling exhibition of Hanson’s sculptures organized by the Art Museum of Fort Lauderdale opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art on December, 1998.
Duane Hanson was born in Alexandria, Minnesota January 17, 1925. He received his BA from Macalester College in 1946 and his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in 1951. From 1962-1965 Hanson was an art professor at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta. While in Atlanta, Hanson was commissioned to produce several large decorative sculptures for the exterior of buildings, including the Stormy Petrel which adorns the Dorough Field House at Oglethorpe University. It was during his time at Oglethorpe that Hanson received a grant from the Ella Lyman Cabot Trust to develop his work with life-sized polyester resin and fiberglass sculpture.
After Hanson moved to New York in 1969, his works were shown in solo exhibitions in New York and Germany. From 1976-78, a major retrospective of his sculptures went on an extended museum tour throughout the United States. Hanson was named Florida Ambassador of the Arts in 1983. His first bronze sculptures were featured in a solo exhibition in Japan in 1984. Hanson died January 6, 1996.
