John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum

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Gutzon Borglum, 1919

John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum (born March 25, 1867 in St. Charles , Idaho , † March 6, 1941 in Chicago , Illinois ), Gutzon Borglum for short , was an American sculptor .

Life

Borglum was the son of a Danish immigrant who worked mainly as a wood carver. His brother was the painter Solon Hannibal Borglum .

Borglum received his artistic training at the Academy of Arts in San Francisco . At the age of 23 Borglum went to the Académie Julian in Paris in 1890 . There he was inspired by Auguste Rodin , among others . After a stay in London , Borglum returned to the USA in 1893.

From 1901 he lived and worked in New York . At the 1904 World Exhibition in St. Louis he was awarded a gold medal for his artistic work.

His main work is the Mount Rushmore National Memorial , which consists of four monumental portraits of US Presidents George Washington , Thomas Jefferson , Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt . Borglum began this work in 1927, after his death in 1941 his son Lincoln Borglum continued the work. Before the First World War , Borglum participated in a similar project on Stone Mountain in Georgia .

John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum died on March 6, 1941 at the age of 73 in Chicago, Illinois.

Leading member of the Ku Klux Klan

Borglum was a senior member of the Ku Klux Klan . The appreciation of Borglum by high-ranking clan authorities is documented. When planning the Stone Mountain relief , Borglum referred several times to the clan ideology . He shared the clan's racist view of the world and was derogatory of the indigenous people of the United States .

Web links

Commons : Gutzon Borglum  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Matthew Shaer, The Sordid History of Mount Rushmore, SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE, October 2016 . Retrieved June 25, 2020.