Sibyl Barsky Grucci

Sibyl Barsky Grucci was an acclaimed artist and sculptor, best known locally for the bust of Penn State author and professor Fred Lewis Pattee . She and her husband bought and renovated the historic Boogersburg School , which she used as a studio.

Barsky Grucci was born on March 20, 1905, in Russia. When she was 8 years old, her family moved to Pittsburgh. Within two months in 1926, her mother, father, and older sister died in separate incidents, which forced Barsky Grucci and her older sister to take care of their four younger brothers.

Barsky Grucci studied painting at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), but dropped out. She taught herself sculpting using kitchen knives, fingernail files, and needles until she could afford professional tools.

Sybil Barskysky Grucci sculputed the bust of Fred Lewis Pattee. (Rauh Jewish Archives)

She sculpted impressionist art but also was commissioned for realistic busts, using wood, stone, marble, and bronze. Barsky Grucci joined the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Society of Sculptors exhibitions; she won the show’s first sculpture award in 1934 for a bust of a local businessman.

She also worked for the Pittsburgh group of the Federal Art Project, a program of the Works Progress Administration, during the Great Depression. In the program, Barsky Grucci and others created works of art for schools, museums, and other civic institutions.

Barsky Grucci married poet and professor Joseph Grucci in 1940. Ten years later, the couple moved to State College when Joseph Grucci became an English professor at Penn State University.

Many of Barsky Grucci’s works were commissioned privately and are in private collections throughout the United States. A notable local work is her bust of Pattee, for whom the Pattee Library at Penn State is named. The bust is in the library’s foyer.

In 1953, the Gruccis bought the recently closed Boogersburg School, a one-room schoolhouse in Potter Township. She used it as her art studio until 2001 when they sold it to Robert Struble and Susan Crary who renovated the schoolhouse and later donated it to the Centre County Historical Society.

Barsky Grucci and her husband retired to California in 2001 where she continued sculpting. She died there in 2007.