{"id":659009,"date":"2026-10-27T22:48:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T22:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/659009\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T22:48:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T22:48:16","slug":"ursula-von-rydingsvard-dead-cedar-sculptor-dies-at-84","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/659009\/","title":{"rendered":"Ursula von Rydingsvard Dead: Cedar Sculptor Dies at 84"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tUrsula von Rydingsvard<\/a>, a sculptor who responded to the austerity of Minimalism with monumental cedar sculptures that had a distinctly human touch, died in New York on Tuesday following a battle with Alzheimer\u2019s disease. She was 84, according to the New York Times.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDespite enormous obstacles, Ursula had an inimitable drive to create and to wrest nearly unimaginable images into a monumental scale,\u201d said Mary Sabbatino, vice president and partner of von Rydingsvard\u2019s representative, Galerie Lelong, said in a statement. \u201cHer sculptures stand as sentinels to inspire new generations-especially women sculptors-to dream new possibilities. She also had an astonishing gift for friendship and leaves a legacy as teacher and mentor to her fellow artists. The network of friendships she made, and decades of devoted friends, family, and studio assistants carry her memory deep within all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"MUMBAI,<\/p>\n

\n\tFrequently using 4\u00d74 cedar beams, von Rydingsvard crafted towering forms that appear to undulate and shift. Made of organic material, they at times even looked as though they were alive, spinning through the air like mysterious animals on the move.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen von Rydingsvard began working with cedar in the mid-1970s, Minimalism was the dominant style in New York, and in order to gain attention, sculptors often welded steel and other metals into imposing, grand forms that loomed high above viewers. Von Rydingsvard chafed against the style\u2019s theory-driven approach and its cold sensibility. \u201cThere was no sexiness, and there wasn\u2019t even any humanity,\u201d she once told the curator Mark Rosenthal, who organized a 2018 show of her work at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

\n\tVon Rydingsvard, too, learned to weld, but the method was \u201cmore frustrating than imaginable,\u201d as she once told the critic Jason Farago<\/a>. Yet she found a solution that pleased her: She applied a hot rod to a sheet of steel, allowing it to create a droplet when it met the surface. \u201cThe heat made the sheet organic in a beautiful, delicate way,\u201d she said. \u201cThat I liked.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCedar came to von Rydingsvard through the painter Michael Mulhern, who purchased many 4x4s for her. She then took the wood to a metalworking studio and proceeded to slice through it, delighting in the ways that she could obtain \u201cforms that felt like the earth, or felt fleshy,\u201d as she put it.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs critic Rachel Wetzler wrote in Art in America<\/a> in 2018, \u201cThe wood\u2019s standardized format offsets the primordial qualities of her sculptures, which loosely suggest, among other things, fossils, rocky canyons, or cresting waves; her best works tend to exploit the animating tension between the underlying gridded structure of the stacked wood and the ragged, irregular forms she unearths.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTree trunks were a no go, she often clarified\u2014her material had to be cedar 4x4s. Her stated reason was that tree trunks retain their form too well. Of the 4x4s, she said, \u201cThese are neutral. They don\u2019t ask anything of you. They\u2019re like a blank piece of paper.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tVon Rydingsvard\u2019s arsenal of materials came to include silk, hair, and cow intestines, all of which she elegantly sculpted into large-scale objects that never felt domineering, even despite their size.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tUrsula von Rydingsvard, ALL THE CHILDREN I NEVER HAD, 2018-24.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00a9Ursula von Rydingsvard\/Courtesy the artist and Galerie Lelong\/Photo Joshua Simpson<\/p>\n

\n\tIn her art, some critics saw references to von Rydingsvard\u2019s biography. For example, Zakopane (1987), one of her most famous works, features sacs of wood beneath spiky protrusions above. The work\u2019s title refers to the Polish town where von Rydingsvard\u2019s mother was born.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut von Rydingsvard insisted that her work was only implicitly related to her lived experience. \u201cI have this feeling that I have this strong link to a past that I never experienced, the peasant farmer past,\u201d she told Farago. \u201cNot that I want to experience it; I never asked for it. But it sort of runs through my blood, whether I want it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"An<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tA work by Ursula von Rydingsvard that appeared in Venice during the 2015 Biennale.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto Daniele Venturelli\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tUrsula von Rydingsvard was born in 1942 in Deensen, Germany. Her mother was Polish and her father was Ukrainian; both were peasant farmers. The Nazis conscripted her father and forced him to work at a labor camp. Once the war ended, she and her family were placed in a displaced persons camp in Germany.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1950, the family moved to Plainville, Connecticut, where her mother worked at a restaurant and her father took a job at a factory while also helping man an adjacent farm. Hers was a distinctly blue-collar existence, and she would later recall that, in Plainville, there was \u201cno such thing as an artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEventually, von Rydingsvard also took a job at her mother\u2019s restaurant. She later studied at the University of New Hampshire and the University of Miami, Coral Gables, where she respectively received her bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe eventually moved to Oakland, California, with her first husband, Milton von Rydingsvard, with whom she had a daughter, Ursula Anne von Rydingsvard. She divorced him in 1973, then set off to New York with her, promptly enrolling at Columbia University\u2019s art program.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tUrsula von Rydingsvard, For Natasha, 2015.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00a9Ursula von Rydingsvard\/Courtesy the artist and Galerie Lelong\/Photo Pawel Czarnecki<\/p>\n

\n\tVon Rydingsvard continued to survive under hardscrabble conditions. She lived off food stamps, and she rented an apartment on 125th Street in Harlem, which she described as \u201cdangerous\u201d at the time. But she also found being a single mother at in her early 30s to be a liberating experience. Finally, she could do what she wanted.<\/p>\n

\n\tThrough Columbia, she got a taste of New York\u2019s art world. She eagerly listened to the critic Max Kozloff lecturing on Marcel Duchamp. She also studied with art historian Meyer Schapiro and artist George Sugarman. Then, after graduating in 1975, she purchased a loft in SoHo and set up a studio.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1981, she decamped for Brooklyn, where she remained for the rest of her career. In 1985, she married the neuroscientist Paul Greengard, who died in 2019.<\/p>\n

\n\tHer sculptures have been shown widely, in venues ranging from the Storm King Art Center in Upstate New York to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in England. As they received greater exposure, von Rydingsvard\u2019s ambitions expanded, allowing her to tackle ever larger commissions.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tUrsula von Rydingsvard, Bronze Bowl with Lace, 2013\u201314.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00a9Ursula von Rydingsvard\/Courtesy the artist and Galerie Lelong\/Photo Jonty Wilde<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2013, she premiered Ona (2013), a rippling array of cedar blocks that can still be found beneath the oculus of Brooklyn\u2019s Barclay Center. Weighing in at 12,000 pounds and standing 19 feet tall, it has a title that translates from the Polish for \u201cshe\u201d or \u201cher.\u201d She welcomed the possibility that one could easily caress her sculpture.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI would actually love people to touch it,\u201d she told the New York Times<\/a> upon Ona\u2019s debut. \u201cThe acid from fingers polishes it, like the Buddhas getting their bellies rubbed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut she also expressed reservations about the improper preservation of her work, which she wanted to feel permanent and immovable. She told Farago, \u201cI don\u2019t want my work to rot. Even after I\u2019m gone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ursula von Rydingsvard, a sculptor who responded to the austerity of Minimalism with monumental cedar sculptures that had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46,5365,296580],"class_list":["post-659009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-obituary","tag-ursula-von-rydingsvard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}