Ursula von Rydingsvard

Color photograph of a woman shot from the collarbone up. Her brown hair is short on the sides and reaches up on the top, with subtle blonde highlights. Her light skin is slightly lined and she smiles subtly, her brown eyes looking right into the camera.

The artist at the opening of Ursula von Rydingsvard: The Contour of Feeling, 2019; Photo by Kevin Allen

Born in 1942

Ursula von Rydingsvard was born in Germany to Polish and Ukrainian parents, peasant farmers who worked in forced labor under the Nazis during World War II. The family moved among nine displacement camps for Polish refugees in Germany following the war. They immigrated to Plainville, Connecticut, in 1950. Although von Rydingsvard’s sculptures are not directly autobiographical, their ambiguous subjects are often imbued with her life experiences.

The artist studied sculpture at Columbia University, where she earned a master’s degree in studio art in 1975. She eschewed the aloofness and machismo that characterized Minimalism, the prevalent artistic style at that time, as she discovered the potential of cedar to express both grandeur and humility. Over the years, she has also explored a variety of other mediums, including bronze, animal intestines, textiles, and delicate handmade paper.

Von Rydingsvard’s work is represented in more than 30 museum collections, and exhibited nationally and internationally. She has been honored with numerous awards, including the International Sculpture Center Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014 and NMWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2019. She lives in New York City and works in Brooklyn.

Artist Details

  • Name

    Ursula von Rydingsvard

  • Birth

    Deensen, Germany, 1942

Works by Ursula von Rydingsvard

  • Apron

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    Resembling the pleats and band of an apron, this large, one-sided, cedar sculpture features carved vertical lines darkened with graphite and stain beneath a solid band of natural-colored wood.

    Ursula von Rydingsvard, Apron, 1997; Cedar, stain, and graphite, 46 x 28 x 12 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Tony Podesta Collection; © Ursula von Rydingsvard, Courtesy of Galerie Lelong & Co.; Photo by Lee Stalsworth

  • Tak

    Approximately five feet tall, Tak has a powerful and direct connection with viewers through its human-sized scale. Tak means “yes” in Polish, though von Rydingsvard prefers to leave the Polish titles of her abstract sculptures untranslated. Poetic and expressive, her sculptures give outward visual form to her ideas and emotions.

    To begin one of her signature vertical sculptures, such as Tak, von Rydingsvard often starts...

    View Artwork Details
    An abstract wooden sculpture composed of four-by-four beams of cedar stacked and roughly carved. Wide at the top, it tapers towards the bottom and sits directly on the floor.

    Ursula von Rydingsvard, Tak, 2015; Cedar, 5 ft. 2 in. x 4 ft. 2 in. x 2 ft. 2 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Wilhelmina Cole Holladay; © Ursula von Rydingsvard, Courtesy of Galerie Lelong & Co.; Photo by Michael Bodycomb

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