Ursula von Rydingsvard

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Ursula von Rydingsvard
von Rydingsvard in her Brooklyn studio, 1997
Born	1942 Deensen, Free State of Brunswick, Nazi Germany
Education	Columbia University
Known for	Sculpture
Spouse(s)	Paul Greengard
Elected	Member, American Academy of Arts and Letters
Website	ursulavonrydingsvard.net

Ursula von Rydingsvard (born 1942) is a sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is best known for creating large-scale works influenced by nature, primarily using cedar and other forms of timber.^{[citation needed]}

Early life and education[]

Von Rydingsvard was born in Deensen, Germany in 1942 to a Polish mother and Ukrainian father. As a young child, the artist and her six siblings experienced the German occupation of Poland and the trauma of World War II, followed by five years in eight different German refugee camps for displaced Poles.^[1] In 1959, through the U.S. Marshall Plan and with the assistance of Catholic agencies, her family of peasant farmers boarded a ship to the United States where they eventually settled in Plainville, Connecticut. She received a BA and MA from University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida in 1965 and an MFA from Columbia University in New York City in 1975.^[2] In the late 1970s, she was part of NYC's Cultural Council Foundation Artists' Project, which was funded under the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA).

Achievements[]

Damski Czepek by Ursula von Rydingsvard in Madison Square Park, 2006

Ursula von Rydingsvard at the National Museum of Women in the Arts

Major permanent commissions of her work are on view at the Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA; Storm King Art Center, New York; the Bloomberg Building, New York; the Queens Family Courthouse, New York; the Nelson-Atkins, Kansas City, and the Barclays Center, Brooklyn, New York. Mad. Sq. Art: Ursula von Rydingsvard was the outdoor solo exhibition presented at Madison Square Park in 2006.

In 2008, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters along with being featured in Art:21 Art in the Twenty-First Century on PBS. A monograph on her work titled The Sculpture of Ursula von Rydingsvard was published by Hudson Hills Press in 1996 and in 2011 Prestel published Ursula von Rydingsvard: Working. In 2014-2015 Ursula von Rydingsvard had her first British show at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (West Yorkshire, UK), her most extensive exhibition to date. The exhibition was accompanied by the Ursula von Rydingsvard 2014 Catalogue, a major publication featuring text by Molly Donovan, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Museum collections[]

Her work Untitled (Seven Mountains), on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is currently on display as part of Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin.

Notable exhibitions[]

Awards and grants[]

• Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work, CAA New York City, NY, 2019^[3]
• Visionary Woman Honors Award, Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia, PA, 2017 ^[4]
• Lifetime Achievement Award, International Sculpture Center, Hamilton, NJ, 2014
• Honoree, Storm King Art Center Annual Gala, New York, NY, 2012
• Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, 2011
• Best Show in a Non-Profit Gallery or Space, American Section of the International Association of Art Critics, 2011
• Rappaport Prize, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA, 2008
• Order of the Cross, Polish Consulate, New York, 2008
• Mary Miss Resident in Visual Arts, American Academy in Rome, Italy, 2007
• 2nd prize, Best Show in a Commercial Gallery, American Section of the International Association of Art Critics, 2000
• Academy Award in Art, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY, 1994
• Best Small Museum Exhibition, American Section of the International Association of Art Critics, 1992
• Honorary Doctorate, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD, 1991
• Individual Artists Grant, National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C., 1986
• Athena Foundation Grant, Long Island City, NY, 1983
• Guggenheim Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, New York, NY, 1983
• Individual Artists Grant, National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C., 1979
• Individual Artists Grant, National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, D.C., 1978
• Fulbright-Hayes Travel Grant, Washington, D.C., 1975

Cultural references[]

• Daniel Traub feature-length documentary of the artist^[5] Ursula von Rydingsvard: Into Her Own, 2019

See also[]

• Inside the Artist's Studio, Princeton Architectural Press, 2015. (ISBN 978-1616893040)

References[]

External links[]

• Biography, interviews, essays, artwork images and video clips from PBS series Art:21 -- Art in the Twenty-First Century - Season 4 (2007).
• Ursula von Rydingsvard at Madison Square Park, New York
• Ursula von Rydingsvard in Sculpture Magazine: A Conversation with Steven Oliver
• Ursula von Rydingsvard in Works & Conversations
• Ursula von Rydingsvard at Barclays Center, Brooklyn, NY
• Ursula von Rydingsvard in Frieze Magazine: At The Height of Her Career
• Ursula von Rydingsvard in The Philadelphia Inquirer

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