Art historians have deemed Duane Hanson to be one of the most important American sculptors of the twentieth century. His lifelike forms, with their realistically translucent skin and authentically unstylish clothes, have stirred viewers to recognize themselves or their own class prejudices. As an artist, Hanson eschewed aesthetic conventions and concentrated on a largely invisible segment of society. Coming into contact with Hanson's figures, noted an American Artist review of Martin H. Bush's Sculptures by Duane Hanson, "was like bumping into real people with life stories as rich in detail as the sculptures." The artist enjoyed a successful three-decade career before his January 1996 death at age seventy-one from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Hanson was born on January 17, 1925, in the rural hamlet of Alexandria, Minnesota, where his Swedish-heritage parents were dairy farmers. In 1930, the family moved to Parkers Prairie, an isolated farming community of seven hundred residents. Hanson, a sickly child...