Sculptor Ursula von Rydingsvard Dies at 84
Ursula von Rydingsvard, the sculptor known for towering works built from cedar, died at her home in Manhattan on Tuesday. She was 84.
Her studio manager, Courtney Childress, confirmed the death to The New York Times. ArtNews reported that she died after a battle with Alzheimer's disease, a progressive illness that affects memory and thinking.
She was born in 1942 in Deensen, Germany. Her mother was Polish and her father was Ukrainian. The National Museum of Women in the Arts notes that her parents were peasant farmers and were forced to work for the Nazis during the Second World War. In 1950, when she was a young child, the family moved to Plainville, Connecticut.
She began working with cedar in the mid-1970s, and it became her main material. She often used 4x4 cedar beams, pieces of timber about 10 centimetres square, stacking and fitting them into large, upright forms. Her studio also works in bronze. Her website describes her as a maker of sculpture in cedar and bronze, and North Carolina Museum of Art describes her as an artist whose large-scale works draw on nature.
Her work has been shown in museums and galleries, and it is still on view in many places. One recent piece, Untitled (1995-2025), is made of cedar and pigment. It measures 107 by 100 by 4 inches, or 271.8 by 254 by 10.2 centimetres, according to her gallery, Galerie Lelong.
She was married to Paul Greengard, the Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist, who died in 2019. The New York Times reported his death at the time.
Her death ends a long career that began with wood and grew into some of the largest sculptures of her generation. Galleries, museums and collectors who hold her work will now handle its care, its loans and its records without her.
