Duayne Hatchett

Published September 17, 2015 This content is archived.

Duayne Hatchett, a prolific sculptor, painter and UB faculty member, died Sept. 7 in Buffalo General Medical Center. He was 90.

By the time Hatchett arrived in Buffalo in 1968 to begin his 24-year tenure as head of UB’s sculpture program, he already had developed a large and varied body of work ranging from prints influenced by the socially conscious work of Diego Rivera to sculptures created from objects he salvaged from junk yards.

He quickly became an integral part of Buffalo’s art community, showing in dozens of exhibitions and expanding his already-substantial repertoire to include abstract paintings created with homemade tools and elaborate art-making devices. He was the subject of a 2009 retrospective in the Burchfield Penney Art Center, which covered 60 years of his work.

A native of Shawnee, Oklahoma, Hatchett joined the Air Force and trained to be a fighter pilot, then studied art and design at the University of Oklahoma. He taught printmaking at Oklahoma City University and sculpture at Tulsa University and Ohio State University before joining the UB art department faculty in 1968.

His work was the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions, including several shows at the Royal S. Marks Gallery in New York City, a survey of American sculpture survey at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1967, the Whitney Museum of American Art’s annual exhibitions in 1966 and 1968, a 1974 solo show in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and “Fifty at Fifty,” a 2012 survey exhibition at the UB Anderson Gallery featuring work by 50 of the most significant historical and contemporary artists associated with Western New York.

His work most recently was seen locally during a 2013 exhibition featuring work by his sons David and Dana Hatchett at Indigo art gallery.