George Petrides

George Petrides, who lives and works in New York City and Athens, Greece, creates a diverse range of sculpture, including abstract pieces and monumental public works. Born in Athens in 1964 and raised there and in New York, he is steeped in ancient Greek sculpture and the works that were influenced by it (ancient Roman sculpture, renaissance sculptors such as Donatello, Michelangelo, more recent sculptors such as Rodin, Maillol…) and the 20th-century modernists who intentionally or not re-interpreted these traditions. His creative process is of his own invention, combining ancient and contemporary methods, including traditional clay modeling by hand, cutting-edge software and 3D printing, and ending with bronze-casting in the manner of the ancient Greeks. 

After growing up in a family of artists and businesspeople, Petrides’ first career was on New York’s Wall Street. At the age of 32, he took his first-ever art class, in oil painting. He continued to study and make art part-time for more than 20 years, taking drawing, painting and sculpture classes at the New York Studio School (from which he received a Certificate in Sculpture) with occasional classes at the The Art Students League in New York and L'Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. He was drawn there in order to study in the same rooms where some of his sculptural masters once studied: Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Isamu Noguchi, others. In 2017, he decided to dedicate himself to making art full time.