Hans Dieter Breder (October 20, 1935 June 18, 2017) was a German-American

interdisciplinary Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

ist. He lived and worked in

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the ...

Early life

Breder studied painting under Willem Grimm at the

Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg The ''Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK Hamburg)'' is the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg. It dates to 1767, when it was called the ''Hamburger Gewerbeschule''; later it became known as ''Landeskunstschule Hamburg''. The main build ...

and received a scholarship from the

Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes The German Academic Scholarship Foundation (German: , or ''Studienstiftung'' for short) is Germany's largest and most prestigious scholarship foundation. According to its statutes, it supports "the university education of young people who, on ac ...

to study art in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1964. Once in the U.S. he worked as assistant to the sculptor

George Rickey George Warren Rickey (June 6, 1907 – July 17, 2002) was an American kinetic sculptor. Early life and education Rickey was born on June 6, 1907, in South Bend, Indiana. When Rickey was still a child, his father, an executive with Singer S ...

Jetztzeit, video installation still, 2012

Career

Breder taught as an art professor at the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public university, public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is org ...

from 1966 to 2000. In 1968 he founded the

Intermedia Intermedia is an art theory term coined in the mid-1960s by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins to describe various interdisciplinarity art activities that occur between genres, beginning in the 1960s. It was also used by John Brockman to refer to works ...

program at Iowa, notable alumni include

Karen Gunderson Karen may refer to: * Karen (name), a given name and surname * Karen (slang), a term and meme for a demanding woman displaying certain behaviors People * Karen people, an ethnic group in Myanmar and Thailand ** Karen languages or Karenic l ...

(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 Ana Mendieta (November 18, 1948 – September 8, 1985) was a Cuban-American performance artist, sculptor, painter and video artist who is best known for her "earth-body" artwork. Born in Havana, Mendieta left for the United States in 1961. Earl ...

and Charles Ray. Visiting Artists to the program included

Hans Haacke Hans Haacke (born August 12, 1936) is a German-born artist who lives and works in New York City. Haacke is considered a "leading exponent" of Institutional Critique. Early life Haacke was born in Cologne, Germany. He studied at the '' Staatlic ...

Allan Kaprow Allan Kaprow (August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as ...

Willoughby Sharp Willoughby Sharp (January 23, 1936 – December 17, 2008) was an American artist, independent curator, independent publisher (he was co-founder and co-editor of Avalanche Magazine with Liza Béar), gallerist, teacher, author, and telecom activist ...

, Robert Wilson,

Vito Acconci Vito Acconci (, ; January 24, 1940 – April 27, 2017) was an influential American performance, video and installation artist, whose diverse practice eventually included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. His foundational p ...

Elaine Summers Lillian Elaine Summers (February 20, 1925 – December 27, 2014) was an American choreographer, experimental filmmaker, and intermedia pioneer. She was a founding member of the original workshop-group that would form the Judson Dance Theater and sh ...

Nam June Paik Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super hi ...

Dennis Oppenheim Dennis Oppenheim (September 6, 1938 – January 21, 2011) was an American conceptual artist, performance artist, earth artist, sculptor and photographer. Dennis Oppenheim's early artistic practice is an epistemological questioning about the nat ...

Carolee Schneemann Carolee Schneemann (October 12, 1939 – March 6, 2019) was an American visual experimental artist, known for her multi-media works on the body, narrative, sexuality and gender. She received a B.A. in poetry and philosophy from Bard College and ...

Karen Finley Karen Finley (born 1956) is an American performance artist, musician and poet. Her performance art, recordings, and books are used as forms of activism. Her work frequently uses nudity and profanity. Finley incorporates depictions of sexuality, ...

Ben Vautier Ben Vautier, also known simply as Ben (born 18 July 1935 in Naples, Italy), is a French artist. Vautier lives and works in Nice, where he ran a record shop called ''Magazin'' between 1958 and 1973. Biography Benjamin Vautier was born on 18 Ju ...

George Kuchar George Kuchar (August 31, 1942 – September 6, 2011) was an American underground film director and video artist, known for his "low-fi" aesthetic. Early life and career Kuchar trained as a commercial artist at the School of Industrial Art, now kn ...

Yvonne Rainer Yvonne Rainer (born November 24, 1934) is an American dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is regarded as challenging and experimental.

, Trinh Minh-ha,

Donald Kuspit Donald Kuspit (born March 26, 1935) is an American art critic and poet, known for his practice of psychoanalytic art criticism. He has published on the subjects of avant-garde aesthetics, postmodernism, modern art, and conceptual art. Education ...

, 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

Program in the School of Art and Art History at the

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."Hans Breder, Artforum, September, 2012, Vol. 51, No. 1, p. 501 Breder further explained his intermedia concept in the September, 2012 issue of

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notabl ...

: "..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 Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley of Mex ...

(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 The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition in ...

Exhibition in 1987, 1989, and 1991. Among the institutions his work has been collected by are the

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was des ...

, Washington, D.C.; the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

, New York City; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...

, Washington, D.C. His Intermedia Archive is installed permanently at the

Museum Ostwall The Museum Ostwall (known as Museum am Ostwall until 2010) is a museum of modern and contemporary art in Dortmund, Germany. It was founded in the late 1940s, and has been located in the Dortmund U-Tower since 2010. The collection includes ...

, Dortmund, Germany.

Personal life

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.Hans Breder, Who Created a New Frontier, Breaking Artistic Boundaries, Dies at 81
/ref>

References

External links

Official WebsiteIntermedia: A Consciousness-based Process
{{DEFAULTSORT:Breder, Hans 1935 births 2017 deaths 20th-century American sculptors 20th-century American male artists People from Herford German emigrants to the United States University of Iowa faculty 21st-century American sculptors 21st-century American male artists University of Fine Arts of Hamburg alumni