About

Biography

Joseph Petrovics was born in Jaszfenyszaru, Hungary. He was artistically inspired from a young age by nature and its materials, spending his youth playing in the woods and interacting with the natural clay of the riverbanks. His artistic education began in high school and continued through undergraduate and graduate terms with the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, a prestigious fine arts establishment in Hungary that accepted as few as three sculptors per-year. In his undergraduate years, he learned a variety of technical skills and worked with many sculptural materials, and was commissioned for such projects as his 1980 life-size bronze sculpture of Jozsef Bem, a general in the 1848 Hungarian Revolution.

His graduation from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1984 qualified Joseph as a teacher of drawing, geometry, and art history for secondary school. In that same year, he began his studies in the Masters Program at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest. Joseph won the Lipot Herman Award for his artistic achievements and was elected as a member of the Art Fund of the Hungarian Republic and Studio of Young Artists of the Hungarian Republic. As he continued to develop his personal style, working with marble and stone carving, metal fabrication, welding, bronze casting, finishing, and patina, he established his own studio and completed several commissions for public monuments. He received his Masters Degree in Sculpting (MFA) in 1986, and won the Derkovitz Prize in 1987 in the National Competition for Young Artists.

In 1987, Joseph, his wife Judit, and their two daughters, Edith and Vera, visited relatives in Princeton, New Jersey, and in 1988, moved to the United States. Here, Joseph was sponsored by Alex Ettl and Sculpture House Casting Company, based in New York City. As the sculptor-in-residence of the Ettl Farm in Princeton, Joseph worked on multiple monument-sized sculptures, and was particularly inspired by the seemingly endless columns of the skyscrapers of New York, viewed on his frequent commutes into the city from New Jersey.

From 2003 to 2006, as the lead sculptor of the team, Joseph worked on the official 9/11 Firefighters Memorial Wall at Ground Zero, New York City. This base-relief is 6-feet in height and measures approximately 56-feet long and is “Dedicated to those who fell and those who carry on.” Joseph sculpted the Memorial Wall from the clay model through to the full-scale bronze chasing-finishing of the monument, which was unveiled for permanent placement in 2006 in honor the Fire Department of New York.

Joseph continues his work as a sculptor at his home in Princeton, New Jersey. He is associated with the Newington-Cropsey Foundation & Academy of Art in Hastings-On-Hudson, New York as a studio instructor for emerging younger artists and graduate students of sculpting.