Joseph Erhardy, was born in Welch, West Virginia (USA) in 1928 (as Josef Herzbrun). In 1949, in full vogue of the American abstract movement, he left his native country and went to Florence (Italy) and studied classical sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti. In Rome, he became the assistant of Mirko Basaldella, who was himself the assistant of Arturo Martini, much admired by Joseph Erhardy. In January 1952, he came to Paris, 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, 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 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) 750 Ninth St., NW, Suite 8300 Washington, DC 20560-0213 (Portrait bust of John Kenneth Galbraith)
"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 granite- 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, Museum Scheveningen, The Hague (acquired in 1998)
