Richard Koontz
Richard Koontz studied sculpture at the Kansas City Art Institute in the 19305, where he also studied painting with Thomas Hart Benton. At the outbreak of World War II, Richard enlisted in the military and was severely injured in a jeep accident. Upon release from the military, he went to New York where he worked for a Greenwich Village clay studio and was responsible for firing works by Alexander Archipenko and other famous modern sculptors.
Richard was then hired to build models for Raymond Lowey, the "father
of modern industrial design." Richard, himself, became an industrial
designer with the firm, working on projects for such clients as the New
York Central Railroad and Greyhound. For the latter, Richard designed the
first toilet facility in a bus. In time, however, he became disillusioned
with the prevailing superficial styling approach at Lowey's studios and,
teaming with Antonin Heythum, established a five-year industrial design
program at Syracuse University. There, Richard became friends with Buckminster
Fuller and other leading visionaries, architects, and designers. It was
also at Syracuse that Richard befriended Croatian modernist sculptor, Ivan
Mestrovic, regarded internationally as one of the century's greatest sculptors.
In the early 1960s, Richard moved to Camp Hill to help establish Capitol Products, a manufacturing company. In this context, he invented products and the techniques by which they would be manufactured. He also designed two educational toys for Hasbro: Think-A-Tron and Mentor. Think-A-Tron was a child's electronic question and answer computer. Players of Mentor, Hasbro's Electronic Wizard, were encouraged to "beat the 'man of bronze' who thinks for himself." Royalties from these games made Richard financially secure for life, and he returned to sculpting in earnest.
Quickly acquiring an astonishing grasp of anatomy and the expressive possibilities of the human figure, he developed a style informed by early Modern influences. In spite of his genius, Richard had little interest in pursuing a sculpting career, believing that, as an amateur, he could work unfettered by the dictums of the contemporary art world. Most of his sculpture was produced in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s, the last decade of his life, Richard's obsessive energy turned once again to design and he developed visionary solutions for problems related to housing and transportation.
From the 1960s onward, Richard's pursuits were largely independent and private. Few people have seen his extraordinary body of sculpture which explores historic, mythological, literary, and religious themes, and reveals his grasp of numerous art epochs. One will detect in his figures traces of the Classical and the Gothic, as well as early Modernist trad!tions. Likewise, one will find echoes of Riemenschneider, Maillol, Barlach, Moore, and even his early mentor, Thomas Hart Benton.