At age fourteen, he took lessons in drawing and clay modeling. After two years, he started to study at the National Academy of Design with Leon Kroll, Ivan Olinsky, and Hermon McNeil. In 1912, he entered the Beaux-Arts Institute. It was there that Jo Davidson and Elie Nadelman helped him out. He was a great artist at everything. In 1935, he started doing mostly just sculpture. Maldarelli is best known for sculptures of female forms that have great detail. Some of them took as long as 13 years. In 1941, Maldarelli won the Logan Prize ($500) for a detailed sculpture of a limestone head. He was a teacher at Columbia University for many years, teaching the art of sculpting.