An American sculptor and engineer who worked on a gigantic scale, John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum (1867-1941) is best known for the Mt. Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota.

Gutzon Borglum was born on March 25, 1867, in the Idaho Territory, the son of Danish immigrants. Restless and independent, he left home as a youth and made his way to San Francisco, where he enrolled at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute. His first formal training was under William Keith. Dissatisfied with painting, Borglum traveled to Paris in 1887 and studied sculpture at the Académie Julian; he also came under the influence of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. After touring Spain and England, Borglum returned to the United States in 1901 and opened a studio in New York. In 1904 he won a gold medal at the St. Louis Exposition for his vigorous and powerfully modeled work Mares of Diomedes.

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