Cedar wood sculpture, 1981. 630x212x140 mm; 24 3/4x8 1/4x5 1/2 inches. Signed, dedicated and dated "6/20/81" in felt-tip pen and black ink on the base.
Acquired directly from the artist by the current owners, with a hand-written note from the artist.
The sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard (born 1942), known for her large-scale works made primarily from cedar, has created an expansive oeuvre over her venerable, four-decade career. Von Rydingsvard spent her early childhood with her parents and six siblings in various Polish refugee camps throughout postwar Germany. They reached the U.S., settling in Plainville, Connecticut, in 1950. Von Rydingsvard eventually moved to New York with her young daughter and enrolled at Columbia Graduate School of the Arts, where she made enough of a mark to secure a teaching position at Yale University. Von Rydingsvard had her first major show in 1988, and from there the demand for her work skyrocketed.
Von Rydingsvard largely eschewed the Minimalist aesthetic that was in vogue with many other artists during the 1960s/70s, at the beginning of her career, and chose to incorporate form as much as concept into her work. Her choice of cedar wood is not incidental--it is a deceptively "un-wood-like wood" with grain which can be easily obscured using charcoal and graphite. Her insistence on greatly manipulating the material, only to create organic forms that mimic nature, creates a disconnect perhaps inspired by the simplicity of her upbringing in refugee camps against the backdrop of the complexities of post-war Europe.
