Harvey Fite

Harvey Fite (December 25, 1903 – May 9, 1976) was a pioneering American sculptor, painter and earth artist best known for his monumental land sculpture Opus 40. A teacher, innovator and artist of many talents, he was primarily a sculptor of wood and stone. Fite is also known for founding the fine arts program at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Fite grew up in Texas, where his family had moved early in his childhood. As a young man he attended evening courses in law for three years, before deciding not to pursue it as a career. At that point he moved east to study for the ministry at St. Stephen's College, a small Episcopal institution in Annandale-on-Hudson, in New York's Hudson Valley. Once there, Fite was drawn to the stage at the campus theater, and at the end of his third year he dropped out. He joined a traveling of actors, and later moved to Woodstock, where he performed with a local theater. According to an anecdote that his stepson, Tad Richards, relates, Fite discovered his passion for sculpting suddenly one day when, while sitting backstage during a performance, he absentmindedly pulled out his pocketknife and began whittling on a seamstress's discarded spool that had rolled under his chair.

A recognized sculptor, Fite was invited in 1933 to organize the fine arts program at his alma mater (St. Stephen's), which, in the three years since his departure, had affiliated with Columbia University and been renamed Bard College. Fite taught there and headed the fine arts program until his retirement in 1969. He settled across the river at the Maverick art colony outside Woodstock, New York.

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