hooks epstein gallery

HOOKS-EPSTEIN GALLERY // JAN 14 // 6-8PM

Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Inc.
2631 Colquitt. Houston TX 77098
713.522.0718
www.hooksepsteingalleries.com

Richard Neidhardt, a native of Tennessee, earned a B.A. from the University of Tennessee at
Chatanooga, an M.F.A. in painting from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. from Ohio State
University. Neidhardt was the art director at the University of Florida Press in the early fifties.
He then became an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Florida from 1954-1961. In
1961, until 1966, he was Art Department Chair at Hardin Simmons University in Waco, TX.
Neidhardt was the Director of Art at Angelo State University in San Angelo, TX for a year,
before joining the Austin College faculty in 1967. He served as Professor and Chair of the
Department of Art and retired in 1986 as Professor Emeritus. He died in August 2009. As
chair of the art department, he mentored several junior colleagues who went on to
achieve prominence both as artists and teachers.

He was awarded a Cullen Grant to Egypt, and Richardson Grants to Southern France and
Greece. His sculptures and paintings have appeared widely in museums, galleries (primarily
Houston’s Hooks-Epstein Galleries, Inc.), and universities in Texas and elsewhere.

In his art, Neidhardt expressed himself in two different ways. His paintings were formal and
abstract statements with little subject matter.

“During World War II as a pilot flying foreign routes, I became interested in cultures and
arts of Europe, South America, Africa, the Middle East, and India. I then began the study
of art as a painter, searching for a kind of purity free from worldly stress and the vulnerable
condition of being human,” Neidhardt wrote in an artist’s statement for the works on display.
“The energy of color’s language, the drawn line’s vitality and the aesthetics of mathematics
appealed to me and became basic to my work.”

But his sculptures came from a side of him that was keenly aware of earth and its absurdities.
“They came from a side of me aware of being a fellow inmate of the earth with all of its
absurdities, a possible justification for being a part of this great mystery,” he said.
Many of his carved wooden images were cast as small bronzes.

Richard Neidhardt:
1921-2009 A Mini Retrospective
january 14 through february 11

Arrows

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