Rudy's father was a craftsman of stained glass and it was in his studio that Rudy worked during his youth. He had his formal art education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, studying under Charles Grafly and Albert Laessle, and won that institution's Cresson Traveling Fellowship in 1927-28. He moved to New York in 1931 where one of his early public commissions was a relief for the Bronx Post Office. A decade later, he moved to Ottsville, Pennsylvania, where he worked for some years on a Guggenheim Fellowship. After World War II, he executed a number of war memorials including one for Virginia Polytechnic Institue and architectural sculpture for the State Museum at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and for the Leigh County Court House in Allentown in the same state. He was also known for his carvings of animals, a number of which were shown at the National Academy where he first exhibited in 1931.
