Ursula von Rydingsvard

Ursula von Rydingsvard
von Rydingsvard in her Brooklyn studio, 1997
Born	July 26, 1942 Deensen, Lower Saxony, Nazi Germany
Education	Columbia University
Known for	Sculpture
Spouse(s)	Paul Greengard
Awards	Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture (2011), Joan Mitchell Award (1997), Guggenheim Fellowship (1983), International Association of Art Critics Award (1992, 2000, 2011), National Endowment for the Arts(1979,1986), International Sculpture Center Lifetime Achievement Award (2014)
Website	www.ursulavonrydingsvard.net
Elected	Member, American Academy of Arts and Letters

Ursula von Rydingsvard born in Deensen, Lower Saxony, then Nazi Germany, is a sculptor who has been working in Brooklyn, New York for the past 30 years. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 1975 after which time she started to work with cedar, a material through which she has explored a wide range of images.

Von Rydingsvard is best known for creating large-scale, often monumental sculpture from the cedar beams which she painstakingly cuts, assembles, and laminates, finally rubbing powdered graphite into the work's textured, faceted surfaces. She deliberately uses cedar boards milled into 4" by 4" widths with varied lengths which create a neutrality or "blank canvas" which enables her to dip into many different possibilities often within the arena of the psychological and emotional. As von Rydingsvard explains this approach: "If I were to say how it is that I break the convention of sculpture (and I'm not sure that's what I do or even if that's what I want to do), it would be by climbing into the work in a way that’s highly personal, that I can claim as being mine. The more mine it is, the more I’m able to break the convention." Her signature abstract shapes refer to things in the real world, each revealing the mark of the human hand while also summoning natural forms and forces. These forms typically include simple vessels and bowls; many suggest tools or other artifacts such as shovels, spoons and fences, or allude to primitive dwellings, geological formations, the landscape, or the body.

Von Rydingsvard's early years were directly affected by the upheaval of World War II. Born in Nazi Germany in 1942 to a Ukrainian father, conscripted for forced labor in that country, and a Polish mother, von Rydingsvard and her family were among the dispossessed that, after the war, were forced to move from one refugee camp for displaced Poles to another, eventually settling in the United States in 1950.

The artist's respect for organic materials and the dignity of labor, and the sense of loss and pain, and the persistent memories that inform her work may be traced back to these formative experiences. "I grew up in displaced persons camps that were barracks built by soldiers that were most expedient, the most pragmatic. It wasn’t even a lumber construction. It was plank construction that wasn’t very warm in the winters because there was no insulation. It was just me, sleeping against a plank, and on the other side of the plank was the outdoors."