Considered a foremost exponent of pure French Impressionism, Joseph Raphael spent much of his career in Sculptor and graphic artist Lovet-Lorski was born in Lithuania in 1894 and studied art at the Imperial Academy of Art in St. Petersburg where he worked briefly as an architect. In 1920, Lovet-Lorski moved to the United States and settled in New York City and in five years hence received his American citizenship.

During his working life, he achieved prominence as a Modernist sculptor but in view of the fact that his work was mainly commissioned by private clients, his work began to slip into obscurity. A decade after his death, a large selection of his major works of the 1920s and 1930s was discovered in his New York atelier bringing his art into prominence once again.

Lovet-Lorski's style was eclectic but his work in the Modern style is the most individualistic and impressive. The female nude became his subject whether in marble or as a lithographic print. Alastair Duncan has written:
...the bold sweep of the body capturing its innate rhythm and grace...his torsos convey a feeling of motion and energy, no doubt partly due to the simplifying and streamlining of facial features and hair. No other sculptor in America caught the prevailing French Art Deco mood as effectively or poignantly.

He was an associate member of the National Academy of Design and a member of the National Sculpture Society, as well as the Salons of Paris. His work is held in the collections of the Luxembourg Museum, Paris; Petit Palais, Paris; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; British Museum, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Diego Fine Arts Society; Los Angeles Museum of Art; Seattle Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts; Boston University; and Columbia University.