Frederick Elliott Hart (November 3, 1943 – August 13, 1999) was an American sculptor. The creator of hundreds of public monuments, private commissions, portraits, and other works of art, Hart is most famous for Ex Nihilo, a part of his Creation Sculptures at Washington National Cathedral, and The Three Servicemen (also known as The Three Soldiers), at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.[1]

Working within the figurative tradition of American Beaux-Arts sculpture, Hart's approach was that of a craftsman. With little formal schooling, he developed his skills on the job, learning ancient techniques from master carvers.[2]

Hart modeled his work in clay. Many of his larger pieces were carved in Italian marble or limestone, or cast in bronze. Throughout his career, Hart explored themes of beauty and spirituality, consciousness and identity, sculpting in transparent and semi-transparent acrylic materials using a process he patented.[3][1]

Strongly influenced by the dramatic poses of Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Anna Hyatt Huntington, as well as the naturalism of Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French,[4] Hart's style was also shaped by that of Auguste Rodin,[5] especially in the way he conveyed movement, experimented with abstract forms, and pushed the boundaries of traditional figurative art.[6][7][8]

According to J. Carter Brown, Director Emeritus of the National Gallery of Art, “It is breathtaking to see an artist with the technical abilities and devotion to craft of Frederick Hart combine these gifts with an ability to go to the brink with them, but somehow keep the inner, emotional, intellectual and spiritual force of the work dominant."[9] In the words of Tom Wolfe: “Rick is—and I do not say this lightly—America’s greatest sculptor.”[10]

Early life[edit]

Frederick "Rick" Hart was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to Joanna Elliott, and Frederick William Hart, a heavy drinker who had served in the United States Navy during World War II.[11] Hart's older brother, also named Frederick William, died as an infant. Hart's mother contracted scarlet fever and died in 1945, when Hart was two.[12]

As he grew up, and his relationship with his father suffered, Hart became known as a troublemaker, and he was sent to live with his maternal grandmother and aunt in Horry County, South Carolina.[13] Hart's father began working as a newspaper reporter in Atlanta, and married Myrtis Mildred Hailey in 1947. Half-sister Chesley Hart was born in 1949. In 1956, they moved to Virginia, near Washington, D.C., and Hart rejoined his family. Although his relationship with his father continued to deteriorate, Hart and his half-sister Chesley became good friends.[14]

Hart was an avid reader, but a troubled student. After failing ninth grade, he was sent back to South Carolina to live with his Aunt Essie, and to repeat the school year. Teachers were worried he would fail out of high school. The principal was almost certain that he would. He challenged Hart to take the A.C.T. to show how little he knew. When Hart achieved a near-perfect score, the principal was stunned. In 1959, he helped sixteen-year-old Hart gain early admission to the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina.[15]

At the same time, the Civil Rights Movement was gathering strength, and the campaign to desegregate South Carolina's school system began. In Columbia, in 1961, African-American students led 250 in a protest march against racial segregation.[15] Hart was the only white student to join them:

“I was just walking by,” Hart said. “I happened to know some of the demonstrators. They were from Benedict College, a black school in Columbia. I went over and started talking to them. That irritated the volunteer police (who were used for riot control). They told me to move along. At that point, I said, ‘Screw you.’ And I joined the demonstration.”[16]

Hart was expelled from the University of South Carolina, thrown in jail, and then chased out of town by the Ku Klux Klan.[16]

Artistic career[edit]

Family (1969)

In 1965, Hart’s sister, Chesley, was diagnosed with leukemia. Because her parents were unable to cope with the illness, Chesley's Aunt Grace became her caregiver. Hart tried to stem his family’s disintegration by helping Aunt Grace as much as he could.[12] The next year, when she was just 16, Chesley died.[12]

In the turbulent period after her death, Hart “stumble[d] into a sculpture class at the Corcoran School of Art, and [was] blown away.”[12] Mourning Chesley shaped what Hart would later describe as his “moral responsibility” as an artist.[17] As he said: Art must ”give hope to the darkness.”[18] It ”must be a part of life. It must be an enriching, ennobling and vital partner... It should be a majestic presence in everyday life."[17]

Hart dropped out of the Corcoran, then attended art classes at American University in Washington, D.C., but dropped out again before receiving a degree.[19] While working at Giorgio Gianetti Studio of Architectural Sculpture, he assisted sculptors Felix de Weldon, Carl Mose, Don Turano, and Heinz Warnecke.[12][1] Hart was also using his time in Washington, D.C., as an opportunity to study the public art of the nation's capital, and absorb the naturalistic style of sculptor Daniel Chester French.[4][6]

Toward the end of the 1960s, Hart began work on one of his earliest and most personal sculptures, Family. Years later, Hart would say that Family was for him a way to come to terms with Chesley's death; it was an effort to represent an idea of stability, to capture a sense of belonging.[14] The first casting Hart presented as a gift to his girlfriend in 1969.[14] Stylistically, Family signals Hart's tendency to straddle the line between Classical and Romantic sculptural traditions. The heavy pyramidal form of Hart's Family evokes the solidity of French's Abraham Lincoln, but the raw, earthy contours set it apart, and situate it within the Romantic tradition of Rodin.