In 1957, while Richard Hunt was still a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, his first sculpture was purchased by no less than the Museum of Modern Art. Hunt became a pioneer of “direct-metal” sculpting, a method in which the material itself is manipulated, rather than cast or carved. He used the technique to make organic shapes from bronze and steel, and also made use of found objects—car mufflers, table legs. In 1965, Hunt explored shape through a different medium: lithographs. At the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, Hunt worked with a printer named Kenneth Tyler to produce eight lithographs and 17 prints that examine the graphic possibilities of the shapes he constructed. The Norton Simon hosts a selection of these experiments. —Jensen Davis