Borglum, (John) Gutzon de la Mothe (1871-1941) , American sculptor, who carved the heads of four U.S. presidents on Mount Rushmore. Born near Bear Lake, Idaho, and trained in art in San Francisco and Paris, he specialized in the sculpture of American subjects. In 1916 he began to carve the Stone Mountain, Georgia, memorial to the Confederacy, a gigantic bas-relief, until a dispute with the authorities halted work. He worked on the Mount Rushmore National Memorial from 1927 until his death. The memorial consists of colossal heads of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, cut out of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The faces, looking out from an elevation of 152 m (500 ft), are from 15 to 21 m (50 to 70 ft) high; yet they possess great realism of detail and expression. After Borglum's death, the project was completed by his son Lincoln.