Frederick Hart

Illuminata I by Frederick Hart

1997

A sculptor and stone cutter in the Classical* style, Frederick Hart was an apprentice at the National Cathedral in Washington DC and there learned about sculpting and stone cutting. Then his big break of public recognition came when he won a competition to design the facade of the Cathedral, which incorporated his thirteen year masterpiece of the Creation, a 21 X 15 foot bas relief*. He also designed Three Soldiers, realistic in style, for the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in DC to contrast with the abstraction of Maya Lin's Vietnam Memorial. Born in Atlanta, Georgia and raised in South Carolina, Frederick Hart was an opponent of most contemporary art, thinking it motivated by political rather than aesthetic reasons. As a proponent of Realism*, he was made an honorary member of The American Society of Classical Realism Guild of Artists. Just before his premature death from lung cancer in 1999, he built his 17,000 square-foot dream home "Chesley," on 250 acres of land in Virginia. This mansion was intended to be an artists' retreat to nourish traditional, classical values and refute modernist* trends that he said allowed anything to be called art. He endured several legal battles including the use of his Three Soldiers on a souvenir without his permission and a lawsuit with Time-Warner over the "demonizing" of his creation scene.