Traveller

Material

Fibreglass polychromed in oil, found clothing, hair, duffel bag and sleeping bag, wooden sticks and paper tickets

Dating

1985 – 1987

About the artwork

The Traveller snoozes sunburned and hung over in a pile of cheap luggage waiting exhaustedly for a connecting flight home.

About the artist

Duane Hanson’s creativity and artistic talent already became apparent in his childhood. He studied art and sculpture at different American universities and then, from 1957 to 1961, he taught at US Army schools in Germany. In Bremerhaven he met the sculptor George Grygo, who worked with polyester resin and fibreglass. Hanson was fascinated by the material’s possibilities and as soon as he got back to the US, he started to experiment with polyester resin.
He had his breakthrough in 1965 with a sculpture named ‘Abortion’, with which he lobbied for legal abortion in the US. Hanson is known as a political artist and many of his sculptures deal with delicate subjects such as violence, racism, murder, rape, suicide or social misery.
In 1969, Hanson moved to New York to promote his career. During the following years, the artist’s sculptures often dealt with the ‘typical’ American and his everyday life. During the 1970s, Hanson had several successful exhibitions in Europe and in 1976 some of his works toured the US. During the 1980s he successfully exhibited throughout the US and in four major Japanese museums. Additionally a big retrospective of his work was shown in Germany and Austria at the beginning of the 1990s. Duane Hanson died of cancer in 1996 – a result of the excessive exposure to his favourite materials polyester resin and fibreglass.