Felix de Weldon

Felix Weihs de Weldon (April 12, 1907 – June 3, 2003) was an American sculptor.

Felix de Weldon was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, on April 12, 1907.

He received his early education at St. Egichin's Grammar School.

In the 1920s, he joined artist's communes in France, Italy and Spain.

De Weldon eventually moved to London, where he gained a number of commissions, among them a portrait sculpture of George V.

A consequential trip to Canada to sculpt Prime Minister Mackenzie King brought De Weldon to North America.

In 1925, he earned an AB from Marchetti College, a preparatory college.

From the University of Vienna's Academy of Creative Arts and School of Architecture, he earned his M.A. and M.S. degrees in 1927 and his PhD in 1929.

De Weldon first received notice as a sculptor at the age of 17, with his statue of Austrian educator and diplomat Professor Ludo Hartman.

He settled in the United States in 1937.

De Weldon enlisted in the United States Navy during World War II and was discharged with the rank of Painter Second Class (PTR 2).

He became a United States citizen in 1945.

At the conclusion of the war in 1945, the Congress of the United States commissioned de Weldon to construct the statue for the Marine Corps War Memorial (called Iwo Jima Memorial) in the realist tradition, based upon the famous photograph of Joe Rosenthal, of the Associated Press agency, taken on February 23, 1945.

In 1950, President Harry Truman appointed de Weldon to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.

In 1951, De Weldon acquired the historic Beacon Rock estate in Newport, Rhode Island, where he lived until 1996 when he lost the property and most of his assets to financial hardship.

De Weldon was a long time Member of the Arts Club of Washington.

His most famous pieces include the United States Marine Corps War Memorial (Iwo Jima Memorial, 1954) in the Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, US, and the Malaysian National Monument (1966) in Kuala Lumpur.

De Weldon took nine years to make the memorial which was dedicated on November 10, 1954, and was assisted by hundreds of other sculptors.

The result is the 100-ton bronze statue which is on display in Arlington, Virginia.

In 1956, he was re-appointed by President Dwight Eisenhower, and again in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy.

In 1959, he received an honorary knighthood for his service to the British Crown.

De Weldon also contributed in creating Malaysia's Tugu Negara (National Monument) when the country's first Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman saw the Marine Corps War Memorial statue in his visit to America in October 1960 and personally met him for favour to design the monument.

De Weldon was later conferred with the title Tan Sri, the Malaysian equivalent of a high-ranking knighthood.

Felix de Weldon died on June 3, 2003, at the age of 96, in Washington, D.C., and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

de Weldon is survived by his son Daniel DeWeldon.

Daniel is collaborating with Barry Krost Management on bio-pic of his father's life.

Approximately 1,200 de Weldon sculptures are located on seven countries.

(A de Weldon monument of Richard Byrd is on McMurdo Sound, in Antarctica).

De Weldon made sculptures from life of three (on June 23, 2016, John Bradley was not believed to be in the photo) of the six servicemen raising the replacement United States flag on Mount Suribachi, on Iwo Jima.

The other three flag-raisers who were killed in action (on June 23, 2016, Harold Schultz was identified as a flag-raiser in the photo and was not KIA) later on the island were sculpted from photographs.