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Sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard died at her Manhattan home on October 27, aged 84. Her studio manager attributed her death to Alzheimer’s disease, according to The New York Times. Over a career spanning more than five decades, she became known for monumental works carved from cedar and held in major museum collections.
Ursula von Rydingsvard, the sculptor whose monumental works carved from cedar drew on memories of displacement and domestic life, died October 27 at her Manhattan home. She was 84. Her studio manager, Courtney Childress, attributed the death to Alzheimer’s disease, according to The New York Times.
Across a career of more than five decades, von Rydingsvard made large-scale abstract sculptures by cutting, shaping and assembling cedar beams. Her work ranged from groupings of cone-like forms to a 17-foot-tall, tornado-shaped sculpture made from 15,000 pounds of wood. She also worked in materials including bronze, textiles and animal intestines.
Her sculptures drew on visual forms associated with human anatomy, nature and household vessels. The work often carried traces of her early life, though she resisted treating it as straightforward autobiography. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Joan Mitchell Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Von Rydingsvard’s work was shown in solo exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Museum in Krakow and Yorkshire Sculpture Park in the United Kingdom. Her pieces are held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
A Distinctive Language in Cedar
Von Rydingsvard’s death marks the loss of an artist whose large, hand-worked forms gave cedar a defining place in contemporary sculpture. She built works at a scale that made the material’s grain, seams and physical weight central to how viewers encountered them. The sculptures connected abstraction with recognizable sources—forms from the body, the natural world and ordinary objects—without reducing them to literal illustrations.
Her work also brought personal and historical memory into conversation with a medium often associated with construction and everyday use. The presence of her sculptures in major museum collections, alongside exhibitions in the United States and Europe, reflects the reach of a practice that developed over decades rather than around a single series or material alone.
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From Refugee Camps to Cedar
Born in 1942 in Deensen, Germany, to a Polish mother and Ukrainian father, von Rydingsvard spent her childhood amid the upheaval of war and its aftermath. After the war ended in 1945, her family of nine passed through eight Nazi slave-labor and postwar refugee camps, according to her account, before traveling to the United States on a military ship in 1950.
In an interview with Art21, she described the wooden barracks in the camps and pre-industrial wooden homes in Poland as influences on her preference for cedar. She also drew on sensory memories, including the feel of a linen nightgown and warmth from the sun, while resisting interpretations that treated each sculpture as a direct record of her biography.
She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Miami in 1965, then completed a Master of Fine Arts in studio art at Columbia University in 1975. Her mature work emerged as an alternative to the detached character associated with some 1970s minimalism, using labor-intensive construction and expressive, irregular forms.
“She moved through the studio like her hair was on fire, and could never slow down.”
— Courtney Childress, speaking to Hyperallergic
Details Beyond the Death Report
The supplied report identifies Alzheimer’s disease as the cause of death based on information attributed to Childress and reported by The New York Times. The report does not provide further medical details. It also does not state whether a memorial service or other public arrangements have been announced, or how the artist’s studio and unfinished work will be handled.
Plans for Her Work and Memorial
No memorial plans or announcements about the future of von Rydingsvard’s studio are included in the report. Her sculptures remain in public museum collections, and information about any services, exhibitions or decisions concerning works still in the studio may emerge from her representatives, gallery or institutions that hold her work.
Key Questions
How old was Ursula von Rydingsvard when she died?
She was 84, according to the report.
When and where did she die?
Von Rydingsvard died at her Manhattan home on October 27.
What was Ursula von Rydingsvard known for?
She was known for large-scale abstract sculptures, especially works made from carved and assembled cedar. She also worked with bronze, textiles and animal intestines.
What influenced her use of cedar?
In an interview with Art21, von Rydingsvard connected her interest in wood to memories of barracks in refugee camps and wooden homes in Poland. She also drew on sensory and domestic memories, while resisting a strictly autobiographical reading of her art.
What is known about the cause of death?
Her studio manager, Courtney Childress, attributed her death to Alzheimer’s disease, according to The New York Times.
Source: hyperallergic.com
