Ursula von Rydingsvard For Adolescents

Daughter of a Ukrainian peasant woodcutter who fled to Germany in 1938, Ursula von Rydingsvard spent the first eight years of her life in refugee camps until the family came to the United States in 1950. She studied painting at the University of Miami and at the University of California, Berkeley. When she moved to New York in 1973, she turned to sculpture. Von Rydingsvard became one of the new generation of sculptors loosely labeled “postminimalist” because she used organic, natural forms to create expressive sculptures.

Von Rydingsvard constructs her sculptures from ordinary four-by-four-inch beams. She glues and dowels together layers of these beams into a massive three-dimensional grid of identically sized elements. She then chisels into the wood, leaving the surfaces craggy. Since 1986, von Rydingsvard has rubbed powdered graphite onto the surfaces of her sculptures. The dark gray graphite on reddish brown cedar produces a subtle surface coloration.