Background
Kiselewski, Joseph was born on February 16, 1901 in Browerville, Minnesota, United States. Son of Blasius and Sophie (Wollney) Kiselewski.
Kiselewski, Joseph was born on February 16, 1901 in Browerville, Minnesota, United States. Son of Blasius and Sophie (Wollney) Kiselewski.
Educated, Minneapolis School Art, 1918-1921; educated, National Academy of Design, 1921-1923; educated, Beaux Arts Institute Design, 1923-1925.
From 1922 to 1926 he worked as an assistant to Lee Lawrie. Four sculptures by Joseph Kiselewski are in the public art collection of the Bronx, in New York City. They include his involvement, in 1932, with several other art deco era sculptors in the creation of Eight Statuary Groups, each 100" x 121" x 70", sculpted from Georgia pink marble, sited at the Bronx County Courthouse, 161st Street & Grand Concourse.
Kiselewski"s three-feet high granite Frogs, are located at P.S. 18 and Patterson Houses, on Morris Avenue, between 145th and 146th Streets.
His bronze Bust of Sylvanus Thayer, 1966, is in the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, Bronx Community College/City University of New York, on University Avenue and West 181st Street, as is his bronze Bust of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Junior., 1970. Kiselewski designed a statue of Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, which is located on the campus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
In 1977 and 1980, Joseph Kiselewski donated his papers, covering the period, 1923–1980, to the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, District of Columbia Included in the papers were biographical material. Award and teaching certificates.
Files on sculpture commissions containing contracts, correspondence, financial records, sketches, printed material, notes and photographs.
Approximately three hundred photographs of the sculptor, his studio, and his work. 2 pencil drawings; and other items. George Gurney, a Washington, District of Columbia curator and art historian interviewed twenty-one sculptors in 1977-1978, one of which was Joseph Kiselewski, for an exhibition, "Sculpture and the Federal Triangle," held at the National Museum of American Art, October 26, 1979 through January 6, 1980.
While Gurney conducted most of the interviews on tape, there is only a questionnaire answered by Kiselewski, which is part of the Gurney material, also on file in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, District of Columbia
Associate fellow American Academy in Rome. Member National Academy of Design, Architectural League of New York, National Sculpture Society Clubs: Century Association.
Son of Blasius and Sophie (Wollney) K. M. Adeline Peters, June 20, 1931.