Ursula von Rydingsvard is a world-renowned sculptor who has been working in Brooklyn, New York for the past 30 years. Best known for creating large-scale, often monumental sculpture, Ms. von Rydingsvard deliberately uses cedar beams milled into 4” x 4” widths with varied lengths, which creates a neutrality or “blank canvas” enabling her to dip into a wide range of possibilities often within the arena of the psychological and emotional. On May 22, she will share a presentation of her work and process with emphasis on new monumental works in cast bronze.
Born in Germany in 1942, Ms. 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, the dignity of labor, and the sense of loss influences her work.
Von Rydingsvard explains: "If I were to say how it is that I break the convention of sculpture, 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."
Ms. von Rydingsvard’s sculpture is included in numerous permanent collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art; Brooklyn Museum; Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Detroit Institute of Arts; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas.
Presently, a large work is exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and on the roof of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2015, her work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in Italy. An exhibition of works at the Fabric Workshop Museum in Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Museum of Art is forthcoming in April 2018.
Ms. von Rydingsvard lives in New York with her husband, Nobel laureate and Rockefeller University Professor, Paul Greengard.