Ursula von Rydingsvard

American, born Germany, 1942

BiographyAmerican sculptor of German birth. Von Rydingsvard was born in a German work camp, the fifth of seven children, to a Ukrainian farmer and Polish mother. After the end of World War II, she and her family were relocated to several different labour and refugee camps before migrating to the United States in 1950 and settling in Plainville, CT. From 1960 to 1962 she took art classes at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, before attending the University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, where she earned a BA and MA in art education. She continued studying art education at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1969 to 1970, moving back to Connecticut and enrolling in art courses at the New School for Social Research in New York City during the summer of 1972. The following year von Rydingsvard attended Columbia University where she studied with artists and scholars including Ronald Bladen, George Sugarman and Meyer Schapiro, and graduated with an MFA in 1975. In 1982 she was appointed assistant professor and later associate professor of sculpture at Yale University. In 1986 she became a professor at the Graduate Division of the School of the Visual Arts in New York. Von Rydingsvard primarily worked with paint and sheets of welded steel before 1976, when artist Michael Mulhern (b 1940) introduced her to cedar beams. She is well known for sculptures created from 4×4 cedar planks whose forms and titles allude to a personal and collective history.

(SOURCE: Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T2021969, 12/8/16)

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