Biography

Joseph Erhardy was born in Welch, West Virginia

Welch, West Virginia

Welch is a city located in McDowell County in the U.S. state of West Virginia. The population was 2,406 at the 2010 census. Incorporated as a city in 1893, it is the county seat of McDowell County.-History:...

 (USA) in 1928. In 1949, in full vogue of the American abstract

Abstract expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris...

 movement, he left his native country and went to Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 (Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

) and studied classical sculpture

Classical sculpture

Classical sculpture refers to the forms of sculpture from Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, as well as the Hellenized and Romanized civilizations under their rule or influence from about 500 BC to fall of Rome in AD 476. It also refers stylistically to modern sculptures done in a classical style....

 at the Accademia di Belle Arti. In Rome, he became the assistant of Mirko Basaldella, who was himself the assistant of Arturo Martini

Arturo Martini

Arturo Martini was a leading Italian sculptor between World War I and II. He moved between a very vigorous classicism and modernism. He was associated with public sculpture in fascist Italy, but later renounced his medium altogether.-Futurism:Martini seems to have been an active supporter of the...

, much admired by Joseph Erhardy. In January 1952, he came to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, where he has been living ever since. After an abstract period, he returned to the figure at the end of the sixties. Artistically speaking, he feels close to an international group of friends, painters and sculptors of his generation, who have been living in Paris since the 50s, including Sam Szafran, Raymond Masson, Roseline Granet, Philippe Roman and Francois Jousselin.

Clair , author, Director of the National Musée Picasso

Musée Picasso

The Musée Picasso is an art gallery located in the Hôtel Salé in rue de Thorigny, in the Marais district of Paris dedicated to the work of the artist Pablo Picasso .-Building:...

, Paris, and General Director of the National Trust, said of his work:
I imagine that in three or four hundred years' time and perhaps in some remote place, such as the Mahdian bronzes extracted from the sea so far away from the workshops that had created them, a bronze by Erhardy will be accidentally unearthed. Those that discover it will wonder at its solid forms, at the perfect fullness of its volume, at the modeling akin to an egg's which is found only in high periods of statuary. The girl perched on a strange contraption will be seen as the officiant of an outlandish cult. She will be compared with all those figures that, from the Scythian solar hearses to Giacometti's Woman on a Chariot have solemnized the wheel. And even if an historian of techniques is there to remind that the contraption in question was called a bicycle, invented at the close of the 19th century and which, near the close of the following century, once again enjoyed widespread popularity, these data will interest less than the form used by the sculptor, contrived or rather rediscovered, thus testifying to the perfect unity of an art which, for millennia, will have scarcely varied its canons or even its themes

Museums

• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
  Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
  The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...
  
   Smithsonian Institution: 7th Street & Independence Ave. SW Mail to: PO Box 37012/HMSG MRC 350 Washington, DC 20013-7012
• The National Portrait Gallery (United States)
  National Portrait Gallery (United States)
  The National Portrait Gallery is an art gallery in Washington, D.C., administered by the Smithsonian Institution. Its collections focus on images of famous individual Americans.-Building:...
  
   750 Ninth St., NW, Suite 8300 Washington, DC 20560-0213 (Portrait bust of John Kenneth Galbraith
  John Kenneth Galbraith
  John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith , OC was a Canadian-American economist. He was a Keynesian and an institutionalist, a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism...
  
  )
• The Corcoran Gallery of Art
  Corcoran Gallery of Art
  The Corcoran Gallery of Art is the largest privately supported cultural institution in Washington, DC. The museum's main focus is American art. The permanent collection includes works by Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Thomas Gainsborough, John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, Pablo...
  
   500 17th Street, NW Washington, DC 20006-4804
• The Library of Congress
  Library of Congress
  The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
  
   101 Independence Ave, SE Washington, DC 20540 (Portrait bust of Daniel Boorstin)
• MIT Museum 265 Massachusetts Avenue, MIT Bldg N52 Cambridge, MA 02139 (Low relief of Sir Robert Jackson)
• Vatican Museum The Vatican Rome, ITALY
• Pompidou Centre/Beaubourg, Paris, FRANCE
• Downing College, University of Cambridge, UK

Selected Public Works

USA

• "Warrior's Head", marble, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., USA (acquired in 1962)
• "Bather" marble, "Little Flower" marble, "Little Head", marble, The Joseph H. Hishhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Whashington D.C. (acquired en 1964)
• "John Kenneth Galbraith" marble portrait bust, The National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C., USA (acquired in 1981)
• "Daniel Boorstin", Librarian of Congress, bronze portrait bust, The Library of Congress, Washington D.C., USA (acquired in 1983)
• "Sir Robert Jackson" low relief in bronze, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Museum, Boston, USA, (acquired in 1996)
• "Friedrich von Bischoff" bronze portrait bust, Museum of Fine Arts, Indiana University, Blooming, Indiana, USA, (acquired in 2001)

France

• "Ruth Fisher", monumental sculpture in granit- Montparnasse Cemetery (Paris) France (acquired in 1963)
• "The Sea", marble, National Museum of Modern Art, Paris, France, (acquired in 1969)
• "Crucifix", bronze, Saint Front Cathedral - Périgueux (Dordogne) (acquired in 1978)
• "Waiting", bronze, The Georges Pompidou Center (Paris) France (acquired in 1979)
• "Coming Home from Market", bronze, Prefectural Square of Cergy Pontoise (Val d'Oise), France (acquired in 1981)
• "Raymond Aron", portrait bust in marble, Foundation of French Judaism, Paris, France (acquired in 1983)
• "Jean Corvisart", monumental memorial bust in terra-cotta, Roubaix Hospital, France (acquired in 1983)
• "Épée d'Académicien" (academic sword), presented to Fernand Braudel upon his election to the French Academy in 1985
• "Madame Borochovitch", memorial portrait bust in bronze, Museum of the French Resistance Mouvement, Nantua (Ain), France (acquired in 1991)

Great-Britain

• "Nude with Drape", bronze (1957), "Girl with hair in a bun", marble (1961), "Little Girl" marble (1961), "Asleep" marble (1964), "Strife" marble (1965), "Curved" marble (1966), "Girl with an apple" marble (1970), "Motherhood" marble (1970), Downing College, University of Cambridge, Great Britain (acquired between 1961 and 1970)

Italy

• "Crucifix" bronze, The Vatican, Rome, Italy (acquired in 1979)

The Netherlands

• "Double Sculpture" monumental sculpture in stone with marble inlay, "Crucifix" bronze, Catherina Hospital, Eindhoven (acquired in 1972)
• "Summer in the Tuileries Gardens" monumental sculpture in bronze, Beelden aan Zee
  Beelden aan Zee
  Beelden aan Zee museum in the Scheveningen district of The Hague, founded in 1994 by the sculpture collectors Theo and Lida Scholten, is the only Dutch museum which specializes in exhibiting sculpture....
  
  , Museum Scheveningen, The Hague (acquired in 1998)

External links

• Joseph Erhardy official web site
• 20th Century Figure sculpture