Hans Breder

1935 - 2017

Iowa City

Hans Breder, pioneering media artist and educator, died unexpectedly on Sunday in Iowa City at the age of 81.

Born in Germany 1935, Breder studied painting at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg, where he was awarded the prestigious Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes to study art in New York in 1964. To supplement his meagre grant money, he worked stretching canvasses for kinetic sculptor George Rickey who quickly perceived Breder's gifts. Rickey included him in a major 1968 book on constructivism and wrote an essay for Breder's first New York show at Richard Feigen Gallery in 1967, "There is only one Breder. He is young but he is unmistakable. He is sensitive and at the same time relentless. The concept is fixed, the design is still open to manoeuvre. Breder has a traditional European background but his classical, even conservative, work is precisely of our time."

He accepted a teaching job at the University of Iowa and in 1968 founded the Intermedia and Video Art Program and taught there until 2000. His was a unique pedagogical style, focusing on collaboration and interdisciplinary discourse. Breder's Intermedia program was recognized in a major 2013 exhibition and book titled, "Anti-Academy," by the John Hansard Gallery in Southhampton, UK. Only three schools were chosen for this exhibition for their early practice in experimental art.

Breder also implemented an influential visiting artist program, started teaching summer classes in Oaxaca, Mexico, and later brought student groups from Iowa to Europe.

In 2007, Smithsonian curator John Hanhardt wrote, "It is important to remember that the Intermedia Program was not art about art. It was art as ideas, art dedicated to envisioning aesthetics of renewal."

He worked with a wide range of collaborators from a variety of fields, exploring liminality and the concept of threshold consciousness

Breder's body sculpture photographs from 1969-73 are represented by Danziger Galleries who featured them in exhibits in New York, Paris Photo 2015, and Photo London 2016. He presented a video installation, "Mindscape/The Subtle Body," at Solivagant Gallery in New York City in 2015.

His work has been collected privately and in major museums around the world; including by the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC); Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC); The Museum of Modern Art (NY); The Whitney Museum of American Art (NY), and the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis). His work has been exhibited three times at the Whitney Biennial Exhibitions.

He retired as F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Art in 2000 and received an honorary doctorate from the Technische Universität Dortmund in 2007. Breder's Intermedia Archive is installed permanently at the Museum Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany, and the range of his work can be sampled at hansbreder.com.

He is remembered and revered by generations of students, and survived by his wife and partner of 36 years, Barbara Welch Breder, PhD.

Hans continued to create throughout his life. In addition to writing, painting, and making collages, he liked to play the piano, listen to jazz and classical music, watch movies and soccer on television, and walk his Belgian Shepherd, Rosa Luxemburg who very recently preceded him in death.