Petridesz, János (1861 - ?)

Sculptor and applied artist. János Petridesz graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 1884, and in 1885 joined the Zsolnay company in Pécs as a decorative sculptor. In 1888 he was appointed lecturer at the School of Pottery in Ungvár (Uzhhorod, Ukraine), of which he became director. He left some lasting works of paper-based applied art: in 1899, he won first prize in a competition to design a certificate for the National Industrial Association, and he designed the decorative motifs for the pages of Egy asszony, a book of poetry by Marcell Vidor (Budapest, 1903). The ceramics he took to the 1902 International Exhibition of Decorative Art at Turin won a gold medal in that section, bringing him international recognition. He did not abandon autonomous sculpture, and he displayed his work at the spring exhibitions of the Műcsarnok gallery in 1894 and 1900. The Corpus Christi and Mary of Lourdes statues in Ungvár Parish Church are also his work. A full-figure statue of St Stephen dated 1896 is today held in the Berehivshchyna Museum in Berehove, Ukraine.