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William Bertalan (1910 – 2001) was a very gifted and innovative artist. He was born in Hungary in 1910 and moved to the U.S. two years later with his parents. He studied art and theatre and upon leaving school, became an apprentice with a company that made plaster models and casts of classical architectural ornaments. During world war two, he enlisted in the U.S. army and was stationed in Trinidad for four years.

There he became the non-commissioned officer in charge of photography at the air base. On one of his photo missions to Barbados, he met and fell in love with Cicely Browne, a Barbadian who was born at Pool plantation, St. John. They married in 1944 and settled in New York for three years after the war.

William Bertalan returned to Barbados in 1948 and in 1965 he set up a foundary in his garden. He soon began to experiment with metal using the 5000 year old "lost wax" process. The method involves the production of a wax model that is enclosed in a plaster of paris mould and later burned out in a kiln. Molten metal then replaces the "lost wax”. Once cooled and hardened, the metal object is removed from the mould to await the artist’s finishing touch. William Bertalan’s sculptures center around lyrical, often abstract interpretations of human and animal figures.

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