Dimitri Hadzi is born on March 21 to Theodore Hadzi and Christina Vafades, Greek immigrant parents, in Greenwich Village, New York. He is one of five children. His father is a furrier from Kastoria, Greece; his mother is from a family of grain merchants from Adrianopolis, Turkey. Shortly after his birth, the family moves to Brooklyn.

Hadzi wins the Wanamaker Drawing Medal. He attends Greek school for three years daily after regular school and receives his first significant exposure to Greek language, mythology, history, and theater. In 1929 the Hadzi family loses its business in the Depression and moves frequently to new residences in Brooklyn. Hadzi's early childhood is very disruptive as a result.

Hadzi passes the entrance examination to Brooklyn Technical High School.

Graduating from Brooklyn Technical High School with a major in chemistry, Hadzi begins work in the research labs at Interchemical Corporation. He initiates lunchtime music concerts with his colleague Ed Greening, which he calls the H and G Music Foundation. Continuing to study chemistry in the evening, Hadzi works toward a degree at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.

On July 4, Hadzi volunteers in the U.S. Army Air Forces as a cadet for pilot training.

Not completing either pilot or navigation training, Hadzi becomes a radio mechanic as an enlisted man. He serves in active duty with the U.S. Army in the South Pacific with the Sth and 20th U.S. Air Force. Spending most of his time on the island of Champagny, Australia, he pursues, with the encouragement of one of his officers, his natural inclination to draw.

Hadzi is stationed in Biak, New Guinea, and Saipan.

Hadzi leaves Saipan and requests discharge from the U.S. Army Air Forces in California in order to hitchhike to the East Coast.

He stops along the way to visit museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Toledo and the Cleveland art museums. Back in New York, he takes evening drawing classes from Aaron Berkman at the 92nd Street Y (YMHA). Hadzi passes the entrance examination to The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and begins a four-year evening program, abandoning a career in chemistry. He is profoundly influenced by a Henry Moore retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. He frequently visits the Museum of Non-Objective Art, later the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Peggy Guggenheim's "Art of This Century" Gallery, where he is influenced by the Surrealists; the Museum of Modern Art, where he is drawn to the work of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and other Cubists; and Curt Valentin's gallery on Fifty-seventh Street, where he is further exposed to the work of Picasso, Jacques Lipchitz, Alexander Calder, Max Beckmann, and Marino Marini. George Kratina, his first-year sculpture teacher, encourages Hadzi to pursue his natural inclinations in his art.

Hadzi continues classes at Cooper Union. His teachers include Robert Gwathmey (drawing), Morris Kantor and Nicholas Marsicano (painting), John Hovannes and Milton Hebald (sculpture). Hebald teaches the second-year sculpture course.

Hadzi assists Hovannes and Hebald on some of their sculpture projects. He describes Hebald as strongly influenced by Lipchitz and considers this influence one of the formative elements in his own work. Although Abstract Expressionism becomes more popular and well known, it has not yet filtered down into the teaching methods of the New York art schools. Hadzi characterizes his education as more “Cubist-oriented.” He works briefly as an artist's model for Stephen Greene. Working as an apprentice in a commercial-art studio, he starts his art collection with a small sculpture by Michael Lekakis. 

Milton Hebald takes his Cooper Union sculpture class to visit Isamu Noguchi at his MacDougal Alley studio in Greenwich Village. Hadzi is strongly affected by Noguchi's work. They would meet again in Rome, where they would become friends.

Hadzi takes day classes at the Brooklyn Museum Art School (BMAS), where Hebald is on the faculty. In addition he studies painting with Manfred Schwartz. He is exposed to the work of other faculty members, among whom are John Ferren, Rufino Tamayo, and Max Beckmann. With a scholarship, Hadzi studies painting with Ralston Crawford at the BMAS.

Hadzi participates in two group shows: "Directions 49" at the Laurel Gallery, New York, where BMAS students show their work, and the "Annual Exhibition of Paintings by the Artists-Faculty and Students of the Brooklyn Museum Art School" at State Teachers College, New Paltz, New York.

Having received a BMAS scholarship, he is able to take an evening course in engraving with Gabor Peterdi. Now focusing more on painting than on sculpture, Hadzi first determines to apply for a Fulbright Fellowship to Greece to study painting, but on the advice of Milton Hebald, he applies to study sculpture instead.

After graduating with honors from Cooper Union, Hadzi spends the summer running a restaurant concession in Woodstock, New York. He is awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for study in Greece, and in the fall he begins studying stone carving at the Polytechnion in Athens. The work is very academic.

His student projects include copies of a sixth-century B.C. kore figure and a horse's head from the Parthenon pediment. Hadzi's stay in Greece exposes him for the first time to Archaic and Classical sculpture, as well as archaeological sites at Mycenae, Tiryns, and Asine. Hadzi travels with two Fulbright Fellows from the American School of Classical Studies to Turkey, where he visits Hagia Sophia and the Hittite Museum.

In January Hadzi travels to Egypt, where he visits the Great Pyramids and the temples at Luxor and Saggarrah. Fascinated with cosmopolitan Alexandria, he visits its museum and explores the city of the poet Cavafy. He meets Henry Moore at the opening of a retrospective of Moore's work in Athens.

Hadzi travels to Rome where he enrolls in Studio Hinna under the G.I. Bill. Rome offers a cosmopolitan environment, enhanced by the American expatriate community. He begins to travel regularly to other parts of Europe, attending throughout the decade major art exhibitions such as "Dokumenta" in Kassel and exhibiting his own work in major cities throughout Europe. Visiting galleries in Rome, he becomes better acquainted with the work of leading contemporary artists such as Mirko, Marino Marini, Afro, and Pericle Fazzini, in whose studio he meets the poet Ungharetti. He spends time in local cafés and galleries, and at Rosatti's on the Piazza del Popolo he meets Federico Fellini, Pier Pasolini, Alberto Moravia, Carlo Levi, and others. There he becomes acquainted with several people in Italian creative circles, as well as American residents who are artists, photographers, writers, and journalists. Tim Vreeland, the architect, introduces Hadzi to Baroque art and Roman monuments. He acquires his first Rome studio.

Enrolling in the Museo Artistico e Industriale, where many prominent contemporary Italian sculptors teach—Fazzini, Emilio Greco, Lorenzo Guerrini, Leonardo Leoncillo, and Renato Guttuso—Hadzi becomes more familiar with the current Roman art scene. He studies ceramics, metalwork, including repoussée technique, jewelry making, and bronze casting. The young filmmaker Peter Hollander, in Rome on a Fulbright grant, spends a month in Hadzi's studio, filming him at work. A former Fulbright recipient, Robert Schneider, expresses interest in showing Hadzi's work in the new and prominent gallery that he has established in Rome. The Galleria Schneider is to become one of Rome's most prestigious galleries, showing experimental work by younger artists in addition to work by those more established—Matta, Pavel Tchelitchew, Eugene Berman, Mirko, and Cagli. In addition, Hadzi enters the International Competition for the Unknown Political Prisoner.

An exhibition entitled "Three Americans in Rome: Ruta-Meo-Hadzi" opens at the Galleria Schneider, Rome. Hollander's film "Dimitri Works in Black Wax" is premiered.

On April 2 Hadzi marries Martha Leeb, an art historian and archaeologist, in Rome. During the 1953-54 academic year, Martha is also a Fulbright scholar at the American Academy in Rome. The two reside at the Academy, where Hadzi is given studio space. Under the directorship of Laurance Roberts, the Academy becomes an exciting center of activities for the Fellows, visiting artists, and scholars. The atmosphere of the Academy promotes camaraderie among the artists, musicians, and historians just beginning their careers. Yehudi Wyner, a young composer, is commissioned by Hadzi to write a chamber work for violin and piano. Through the coming two decades, Hadzi would be exposed to a regular stream of talented artists, writers, scholars and other intellectuals from the United States and Europe whose frequent visits to Rome would considerably enrich his stay in the city. 

Hadzi wins third prize in the Deruta International Ceramics Competition at Perugia. In Paris, W. Stanley Hayter introduces Hadzi to Alberto Giacometti. With archaeologists and scholars at the Academy, such as Frank Brown, Lily Ross Taylor, and William MacDonald, Hadzi visits many cities and sites.

Their instruction gives him a deeper understanding of the history, architecture, and culture of Rome and its environs. He briefly assists the sculptor Waldemar Ramisch on his public commission in Philadelphia. Other visitors whom Hadzi befriends include composers, architects, poets, art historians, painters, and museum professionals, including Elliot Carter, Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti, Robert Venturi, Theodore Roethke, Richard Wilbur, Vincent Scully, Andrew Carduff Ritchie (MoMA), Gordon Washburn (Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh), and Perry Rathbone (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).

Hadzi receives the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award for sculpture. Among the 1955-56 Fellows at the American Academy in Rome are Charles Brickbauer and Warren Petersen, architects who would later be instrumental in Hadzi's commission for “Helios” (Sun Life Insurance Company, Baltimore).

Invited by Andrew Carduff Ritchie, Hadzi exhibits Centaurs, Bird Woman, and other bronzes in the "New Talent IX Exhibition" at MoMA. One piece is purchased by David Rockefeller; another, by Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd. Stephen Radich, formerly with Curt Valentin and then an assistant at the Martha Jackson Gallery, invites Hadzi to display pieces at the Jackson Gallery. His first child, Cristina Hadzi, is born.

Hadzi receives a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. He is invited to participate in the International Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition in Middleheim Park, Antwerp. At the Academy in Rome, he develops a close friendship with Henry Millon, an art historian and specialist in Italian Baroque architecture.

Over the years, Millon strongly supports Hadzi's work. Fascinated by classical archaeology, the Hadzis tour ancient sites in Greece with the Millons, concentrating mainly on Doric temples. In Pylos, they visit Carl Bleen at the famous archaeological site. Hadzi enters the international competition for a monument at Auschwitz.

Hadzi's first solo show opens at the Galleria Schneider, Rome. He also participates in several other exhibitions including the "1958 Pittsburgh Bicentennial International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture," the "Italian Pavilion, Biennale XXIX," Venice, "Projects for a Concentration Camp Monument," Museum of Auschwitz, Poland, and the Sonsbeek Park, an international open-air sculpture exhibition in Arnheim, Netherlands, from which the city of Tilburg purchases a work. In Rome, Hadzi meets the architect Gordon Bunshaft, also an avid collector of modern art, and buys a German etching press to continue his printmaking.

When Isamu Noguchi visits the Academy in the summer, Hadzi introduces him to the Roman foundries. The Chilean artist Roberto Matta visits Hadzi's studio, where the two artists collaborate on a Crucifixion sculpture.

Hadzi participates in "Recent Sculpture, U.S.A." at MoMA, which purchases Elmo I. The art historian Leo Steinberg arranges for him to have a private solo show at the Manhattan apartment of Helene Seiferheld. Among the notable sales are Omphalos, purchased by Bartlett Hayes for the Addison Gallery of American Art; and at the suggestion of Gordon Bunshaft, Scudi II and Elmo I are purchased for the art collection of the Chase Manhattan Bank. Hadzi is the youngest sculptor to be asked to make a proposal for the Bank plaza. Noguchi, Jean Dubuffet, Moore, Calder, and Giacometti had previously been invited to make proposals. He is invited again to participate in the Middleheim Park International Exhibition. Hadzi purchases his via Eleonora Pimentel Studio.

Hadzi mounts a solo show at Galleria Schneider, Rome.

He shows in many group exhibitions in New York and Europe, including “Annual Exhibition 1960: Sculpture and Drawings,” The Whitney Museum of American Art; and "Aspects de la Sculpture Americaine," Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris.

"Dimitri Hadzi, Sculpture," his first solo show in New York, opens at the Stephen Radich Gallery. Several major museums buy his works: the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum purchases Elmo V; and Joseph Hirshhorn buys two large pieces. Another solo exhibition at the Galerie van de Loo in Munich. Bronze works from the 1959 "Recent Sculpture U.S.A.” exhibition, purchased by MoMA, appear again in the “Recent Acquisitions” show. Forme Sospese/Suspended Forms is acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art. Hadzi participates in the "Pittsburgh International," Carnegie Institute of Art.

Hadzi is represented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in the exhibition "Modern Sculpture from the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Collection." Scudi IV is purchased by the Yale University Art Gallery. Thermopylae II is added to the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Selected by Peter Selz, works by Hadzi and Louise Nevelson represent contemporary American sculpture in the U.S. Pavilion at the XXXI Biennale, Venice. Hadzi and Nevelson meet there for the first time and become friends. A solo show of sculpture opens at the Galerie Hella Nebelung in Düsseldorf.

Hadzi receives an award for his accomplishments from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He is commissioned to design the bronze doors for St. Paul's Within-the-Walls, the American Episcopal Church in Rome designed in Victorian gothic style by George E. Street. His son, Stephen Hadzi, is born.

"Dimitri Hadzi, Sculpture" opens at the New Gallery, Hayden Library, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

Elmo MIT, commissioned by MIT to be installed in the courtyard of the Hayden Library, becomes the seed for its future sculpture collection. Thermopylae II is purchased by a Princeton University alumnus for installation in the Engineering Quadrangle. A solo show is mounted at the Felix Landau Gallery, Los Angeles. Hadzi's works are among those by Americans selected by the London County Council for its Sixth Triennial (International) Exhibition of Sculpture in the Open Air, Battersea Park, London. He tours Berlin, Dachau, Munich, and other German cities with curator Peter Selz, who was then organizing a Max Beckmann retrospective. Hadzi begins seriously collecting graphics, in particular, Beckmann prints.

Hadzi shows work in the U.S. Pavilion at the New York World's Fair.

Upon the recommendation of René d'Harnoncourt, Hadzi is selected by the International Council of MoMA to participate in the exhibition "Modern Sculpture, U.S.A.," to be held at the Musée Rodin, Paris. He exhibits a sculpture in the Festival of the Arts in the Rose Garden on the White House grounds sponsored by President and Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson. He also shows work at the "126 Frühjahr Ausstellung," Hanover, Germany. Floating Helmets is bought by the Yale University Art Gallery. The Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, purchases a large work.

K. 458 The Hunt is unveiled at Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall; formerly Avery Fisher Hall), Lincoln Center, New York. The sculpture is commissioned by Mr. and Mrs. David Rockefeller for the building designed by Max Abramovitz. Helios, a 15-foot suspended bronze, is unveiled at the new Sun Life Insurance Company building at the Charles Center in Baltimore.

Two porcelain reliefs are commissioned by the Rosenthal Porcelain Company, Selb, Germany. The series includes works by Henry Moore, Lucio Fontana, Fritz Wotruba, and Etienne Haidu. Hadzi visits Auschwitz with a group from Rome.

"Dimitri Hadzi, Sculpture, Fifteen Years in Rome: 1953-1968" opens at the Temple Abroad, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Rome.

Thermopylae, a monumental bronze piece, is unveiled in front of the John F. Kennedy Federal Office Building (General Services Administration; Walter Gropius, Samuel Glaser/T.A.C., architects) at Government Center in Boston. Hadzi is appointed artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire as part of the Congregation of the Arts at the Hopkins Center for the Arts. Pursuing a passion, Hadzi takes a geology course at Dartmouth. He exhibits recent works in two solo shows at the Jaffe-Friede Gallery, Dartmouth College, and at the Felix Landau Gallery, Los Angeles.

A bronze sculpture fountain, Centaur with Pipes, is placed in the garden of the new Faculty Center at Princeton University.

A solo show opens at the Alpha Gallery, Boston. Hadzi also exhibits works at the Eleventh Biennale, Middleheim Park, Antwerp.

A solo show opens at the Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago.

Arcturus, a 25-foot bronze work, is installed in the main plaza of Gunnar Birkerts Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis. "Dimitri Hadzi: Selected Work from 1961 through 1973" opens at the Jodi Scully Gallery, Los Angeles. With Leon Kirchner, Richard Meier, and Robert Hamilton, Hadzi is appointed artist-in-residence (1973-74) at the American Academy in Rome.

A solo show at Galleria dell'Obelisco, Rome. A 12-foot version of Arcturus is purchased for the Sculpture Garden at Fullerton College, Fullerton, California, where Hadzi is appointed artist-in-residence. Invited by the University of Oregon in Eugene, Hadzi joins Roger Bolomey, Bruce Beasley, John Chamberlain, Hugh Townley, and Tony Rosenthal for the Oregon International Sculpture Symposium. He works for the first time on large-scale stone sculpture. Aided by art students from the University of Oregon, Hadzi installs a monumental basalt piece, Willamette River Oracle, in Alton Baker Park. This work marks an important change from his work in bronze of the past two decades.

Hadzi begins teaching at Harvard University as a visiting lecturer in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies. An exhibition, "Sculpture by Dimitri Hadzi," opens at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard.

Elmo V is added to the Empire State Plaza Art Collection, Albany, New York. At its 117th Commencement exercises, Cooper Union presents Hadzi with its Citation Award for high achievement in the visual arts. River Legend, a basalt arch, is erected at the new Federal Office Building in Portland (General Services Administration, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, architects). Promoted to professor, Hadzi becomes the first artist to receive a tenured position at Harvard. He begins summer visits to Siphnos, a Cycladic island.

During his fourteen-year tenure at Harvard, Hadzi participates in a frenzy of academic activities, lectures, concerts, film showings, and student productions. Until his retirement in 1989, his main studio is on the top floor of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, the only Le Corbusier building in the United States. Hadzi is highly motivated and creative in this space, sensing the ever-present spirit of the great architect.

Hadzi serves as sculptor-in-residence, White Mountain Center for the Arts, Jefferson, New Hampshire. An exhibition, "Recent Sculpture: Dimitri Hadzi," opens at the Alpha Gallery in Boston. Phoenix is bequeathed to the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts. Installation and dedication ceremonies are held for Hadzi's ecumenical bronze doors designed for St. Paul's Within-the- Walls in Rome. The Archbishop of Canterbury attends the convocation. Further exploring his interest in geology, Hadzi takes part in a two-week trip through the Grand Canyon. Harvard University awards him an honorary Master of Arts degree. He is nominated for the AIA Medal (American Institute of Architects), as he will be again in 1985 and 1991.

"Dimitri Hadzi, Recent Sculpture" opens at Gruenebaum Gallery, New York. "Dimitri Hadzi, Sculpture" opens at the Mekler Gallery, Los Angeles. The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters purchases two drawings that appear concurrently in "Childe Hassam Fund Exhibition." Hadzi is elected a Fellow by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston. Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Bunshaft donate Scudi IV to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire, adds Hephaestus III to its permanent collection. The Arts Club of Chicago presents the exhibition "Prints from the Collection of Dimitri Hadzi: Old Masters to Modern." As acting director at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, he organizes an exhibition of the graphic work of Eduardo Chillida. Hadzi is divorced from Martha Leeb Hadzi.

Hadzi's work is selected to be included in the exhibition "Art in the Vice-President's House," Washington D.C. He participates in "Art in America after World War II* at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. He wins the competition to design a sculpture for Harvard Square as part of a major renovation and extension of the Red Line subway by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. In addition, he receives a commission from the International Committee for the History of Art to design a bronze medal for the Richard Krautheimer Award, which is given biennially for the most distinguished new book in architectural history. Hadzi completes a sculpture fountain group at the Johnson Wax Council House, Racine, Wisconsin. The piece includes large and small fountains on an intarsia floor with two stone benches. This commission enables Hadzi to visit quarries across Wisconsin with his assistant Tom Kruskal, a former student who would work with him on two future commissions in Toledo, Ohio, and Copley Place, Boston.

Bishop's Triad, a 24-foot gray granite sculpture, is dedicated at One Dallas Center, Dallas, Texas, a complex designed by Harry Cobb of I. M. Pei and Associates. Hadzi is commissioned to make the processional crucifix for Pope John Paul II's visit to Boston. He opens a solo show at the Mekler Gallery, Los Angeles, and illustrates Anthony Hecht's poem Venetian Vespers for a publication by David Godine, Boston.

"Dimitri Hadzi, New Stone Sculptures" opens at the Gruenebaum Gallery, New York.

His sculpture fountain Propylaea is dedicated at One Seagate, Owens-Illinois World Headquarters, in Toledo, Ohio (Harrison and Abramovitz, Architects; Sasaki Associates, Landscape Architects). A retrospective exhibition opens in the main building concurrently. Pillars of Hercules III is dedicated at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. Hadzi is invited by Alexander Xydis, the Greek art critic, to participate in "Europalia 1982" at the Cultureel Centrum Hasselt, an international sculpture exhibition in Brussels. A solo show opens at the Mekler Gallery, Los Angeles. With the sculptors Red Grooms, Tony Rosenthal, and Tom Wesselmann, Hadzi exhibits at the Boston Athenaeum. In order to better accommodate his larger works, he buys a building with a large yard at 111 Charles Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hadzi establishes a new course, Introduction to Printmaking, at Harvard University. 

Hadzi is elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York. His work is shown in a concurrent exhibition of work by newly elected members. He also participates in "Seven Sculptors at Harvard," Sert Gallery, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. He is appointed visiting artist, Vermont Studio School, with Elmer Bischoff and Stanley Boxer.

A 60-foot marble, granite, and travertine sculpture fountain is unveiled at the Copley Place shopping complex (the Architects' Collaborative, Howard Elkus, architect, Boston). Filmmaker Len Gittleman makes “Atrium Sculpture," a short film about the Copley Place piece. "Pillars of Hercules and Related Works" opens at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, as does a solo show at Gruenebaum Gallery, New York. Hadzi is awarded an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship Grant "to survey contemporary and traditional art activities in Japan." His interest in foreign cultures takes him to India and to Central America. These travels will subsequently be supplemented by regular visits to Greece, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

Omphalos is installed in Harvard Square. Hadzi makes a second trip to Egypt and spends three weeks studying architecture and sculpture. In June, he marries Cynthia Hoyle von Thüna. On the first of three visits to Japan, he meets artists, musicians, architects, and is escorted by photographer Michio Noguchi. He stays in the Shikoku studio and home of Isamu Noguchi.

Carleton Arch is erected in honor of the college founders at the Carleton College Library, Northfield, Minnesota. Hadzi returns to Japan for a month-long visit.

Fox River Oracle, a monumental dolomite group, is dedicated in Appleton, Wisconsin. Lawrence University confers an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree on Hadzi. Accompanied by an exhibition of works on paper, Primavera, a 13-foot sculpture of mixed granites, is unveiled at Pine Manor College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. "Dimitri Hadzi, New Sculpture" opens in November at the Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago. The Hakone Open Air Museum awards Hadzi the Museum Award for Thebes III at its Fifth Annual Henry Moore Grand Prize (Invitational) Exhibition, Hakone, Tokyo.

"Dimitri Hadzi: Recent Prints" opens at Martin Sumers Graphics, New York. Hadzi's work and career are discussed in the film "From Reliable Sources: The Archives of American Art." produced by the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Hadzi attends the International Sculpture Symposium in Dublin with Albert Elsen and meets with Eduardo Chillida and Seamus Heaney. After a lapse of many years, he begins to paint again.

The retrospective exhibition, "Dimitri Hadzi, the Harvard Years: 1975-1989," opens at the Sert Gallery, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University. The Cooper Union, New York, awards him the Augustus Saint-Gaudens Medal for "outstanding professional achievement in art." Solo shows open at the Kouros Gallery, New York, and at the Rikugien Gallery, Tokyo. Creazione, a work in bronze, is commissioned for the Embarcadero Center, San Francisco. Hadzi retires from teaching at Harvard University, in order to explore painting and printmaking and to devote full attention to his sculpture in stone, bronze, and wood. He begins to introduce applied color to his work in stone and bronze, while his sculpture studies strongly inform his painting and graphics. At the Isamu Noguchi Museum and Sculpture Garden, Long Island City, New York, Hadzi is invited, as a friend and fellow artist, to give a memorial tribute. He makes an archaeological trip to Anatolian Turkey.

Hadzi is named an associate member of the National Academy of Design. Agapetime, a bronze, is commissioned by the Paul Tongas family for the Lowell, Massachusetts public art collection. Red Mountain, in mixed granites, is commissioned by the General Services Administration for the Hugo Black Federal Courthouse in Birmingham, Alabama. He holds solo shows at the St. Luke's Gallery, Washington, D.C., and the Smith Andersen Gallery, Palo Alto, California. Hadzi also participates in the exhibition "The Unique Print" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

An exhibition of four large sculptures opens at The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Solo shows are offered at the Levinson-Kane Gallery, Boston, and the Art Museum, Duxbury, Massachusetts. Hadzi is invited to make prints at the Garner Tullis workshop, New York. 

A solo exhibition opens at Gremillion Gallery, Houston.

Hadzi collaborates with Seamus Heaney on the book “Keeping Going,” a collection of poetry with etchings by Hadzi (published by William Ewert at the Bow and Arrow Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts). He begins to spend summer weeks on Cape Cod and travels to Guatemala and Honduras with a small group from Harvard University to study Mayan sculpture. He begins an experimental group of large-scale works in plaster.

Hadzi is invited again to work at the Smith Andersen workshop in Palo Alto, California. He produces a large body of work including a portfolio. He begins carving on two massive English oak tree trunks, which are later polychromed. He spends time working on illustrations for Cavafy's poems, which he studies intensely.

The video "Dimitri Hadzi at Stanford" records one of Hadzi's last conversations with the art historian Albert Elsen. Elsen, who had been a longtime friend and supporter of Hadzi's work, dies shortly after the interview is completed. Hadzi becomes a member of Long Point Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts, and has his first show in August. In October, Dimitri and Cynthia Hadzi tour Greece with Seamus and Marie Heaney (while there, Heaney wins the Nobel Prize for Literature). In November, "Dimitri Hadzi: Sculpture, Monotypes, Paintings, 1985-1995" opens at the Kouros Gallery, New York.

Hudson Hills Press publishes a definitive study on Hadzi. Authored by Peter Selz, the Nobel Prize-winner Seamus Heaney introduces this volume that richly reflects every aspect of Hadzi's career inducing intimate studio photographs to large architectural commissions.

Hadzi is invited as visiting artist at the Vermont Studio Center. A solo exhibition opens at the Long Point Gallery, Provincetown.

In January, the Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, holds its third solo exhibition by Hadzi.

Hadzi’s work is presented in several museum exhibitions including “The Modern Woodcut” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and “Art of the 50s” at the Davis Museum, Wellesley College. Solo exhibitions are held at Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore.

Exhibits a new body of work in stoneware ceramics at Kouros Gallery, New York.

Hadzi travels to Australia visiting the small island of Champagny where he was stationed during World War II and where his commitment to a life in art began.

The exhibition “Dimitri Hadzi at 85” opens in March at Kouros Gallery, New York. Due to illness, Hadzi was unable to attend the opening and he died a month later on April 16 in Boston.