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Harvey Fite (December 25, 1903 – May 9, 1976)" Harvey Fite Dies; Sculptor was 72". New York Times. May 11, 1976. Retrieved 2017-06-17. was a pioneering American sculptor, Painting and best known for his monumental land sculpture Opus 40. A teacher, innovator and Woodstock artist of many talents, he was primarily a sculptor of wood and stone. Fite is also known for founding the program at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
He joined a traveling troupe 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 Bobbin 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 until his retirement in 1969. He settled across the river at the Maverick art colony outside Woodstock, New York.
That summer he was invited by the Carnegie Institute to do restoration work on ancient Maya art in Copan, Honduras. Fite was profoundly influenced by the art and architecture of the Maya, especially by their method of dry-stone construction. The next spring he began to organize the rubble scattered about the disused quarry, beginning what eventually became his life's work: a sculptured environment of terraces, alleys, ramps, steps and rain-fed pools which he would eventually name "Opus 40", as he estimated it would take him forty years to complete. Over the decades, Fite single-handedly moved and positioned stones, including at one point a nine-ton bluestone monolith, using ancient Egyptian methods of leverage and hoisting.
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