Frederick Hart The Angel XX Sec

The Angel bronze sculpture n 149 of 350 Frederick Hart 1943-1999
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]