Hans Breder

Born - Germany

Like Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian, for Hans Breder the task of art, as a kind of thought, was spiritual. His work articulates and evokes an ineffable power beyond reason and unreason.  Against the monumental materialism of Western culture over the last six decades, Breder’s sensibility was expressed in and between painting, sculpture, photography, music, installation, video and film--each expression an invitation to subversive liminality and momentary transcendence.  Breder’s work dissolves boundaries and manipulates perception, sometimes enticing, sometimes shocking the observer to an experience of liminality from which a realm of pure possibility may emerge.

Hans Breder studied painting in his native Germany before coming to the U.S. in the mid-1960s. One of the first video artists whose work has been included in three Whitney Biennials, Breder founded the Intermedia Program in the School of Art & Art History at the University of Iowa in 1968 and directed it until his retirement as a F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor in 2000.  The internationally regarded program built on Breder’s interdisciplinary inclination for intellectual and aesthetic collision.

photo: Chris Coretsopoulos

Artist Collection List

Title Year Runtime Collection
7 + 7 2015 31 minutes Single Titles
an-tee-sit-ee 1984 1 hour 1 minute Single Titles
anti-city 1984 9 minutes Single Titles
betwixt 2014 9 minutes Single Titles
black and white 2004 7 minutes 30 seconds Single Titles
boxed-in 1969 9 minutes Single Titles
boxed-in 1993 1993 10 minutes Single Titles
danza de la muerte 2016 10 minutes 30 seconds Single Titles
eclipse 1970 10 minutes Single Titles
Fontana Song for Scrim 2001 10 minutes Single Titles
For C…, In Memory I 1971 1 minute 45 seconds Early Video Art, Single Titles
For C…, In Memory II 1971 1 minute 45 seconds Early Video Art, Single Titles
geKLEMMpt: Physical Religion 2011 1 hour Single Titles
How Faustus Had His First Sight of Paradise 1971 9 minutes Early Video Art, Single Titles
hybrid 1970 11 minutes Early Video Art, Single Titles
IKARUS 1974 20 minutes Single Titles
intertext 1976 12 minutes Early Video Art, Single Titles
janus-faced 1994 18 minutes Single Titles
jen-uh-sahyd 2015 19 minutes Single Titles
Lux Aeterna 2016 41 minutes Single Titles
Moscow Postcards 1989 15 minutes Single Titles
My TV Dictionary: The Drill 1986 4 minutes Single Titles
Oaxaca 2004 2013 44 minutes Single Titles
Percussion Piece 1973 9 minutes Early Video Art, Single Titles
quanta 1967 7 minutes Single Titles
Rosa 1980 2 minutes 30 seconds Single Titles
Salomé 2015 44 minutes Single Titles
Stavros 1980 5 minutes Single Titles
tel-uh-vizh-uh-n 2014 29 minutes Single Titles
THE AX HAS FLOWERED 2016 13 minutes Single Titles
The Nazi Loop 1996 Empty Single Titles
the passage 2009 21 minutes Single Titles
through the glass 1973 7 minutes 30 seconds Single Titles
tlocalula (blue) 2016 13 minutes 30 seconds Single Titles
tlocolula (green) 2016 21 minutes Single Titles
traces 2015 19 minutes Early Video Art, Single Titles
umbral 1974 10 minutes Single Titles
under a malicious sky 1988 10 minutes Single Titles
Ursonate 1986 1986 30 minutes Single Titles
Vision of St. Bernard 2016 44 minutes Single Titles
words ending 2014 20 minutes Single Titles
zwielicht (germany) 2006 25 minutes Single Titles
zwielicht (usa) 2016 41 minutes Single Titles