Harold Gebhardt, 81; Sculptor, Arts Teacher at USC

Harold Gebhardt, an artist and academician who began carving wooden horses when he was a young man on his father’s Wisconsin farm and became a leading sculptor and professor emeritus of fine arts at USC, died Friday in Sylmar. He was 81.

Known primarily as a sculptor in wood and stone, Gebhardt also had a reputation for small acrylic paintings. He had exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the Los Angeles County Art Museum and institutes and museums in Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, Portland, Santa Barbara and elsewhere.

Gebhardt studied at the Layton School of Art in his native Wisconsin before moving to Los Angeles about the time of World War II. He maintained a studio in Sylmar.

He headed the sculpture department at the old Los Angeles County (now Otis) Art Institute from 1943 to 1957 and at Occidental College from 1941 to 1961. He was a professor of fine arts at USC from 1957 to 1973.

Writing in 1976 of his paintings, Times art critic William Wilson said, “They seem to represent a late love affair by a man set from both academic responsibility and the weighty strictures of sculpting. . . .”

Survivors include his wife, Evelyn, two sons, a daughter and three grandsons.