AFA ArtTalk: Ursula von Rydingsvard September 13, 2011

The American Federation of Arts (AFA) is pleased to announce that Ursula von Rydingsvard will be giving the first of the fall 2011 ArtTalks, at Christie’s on Tuesday, September 13, at 6:30 p.m. ArtTalks, the AFA’s lecture series, features notable figures in the art world. Following the lecture, audience members are invited to participate in a question-and-answer session and a wine reception. In-kind support for ArtTalks is provided by Christie’s.

About Ursula von Rydingsvard: One of the most acclaimed sculptors of her generation, Ursula von Rydingsvard is renowned for her meticulously carved, cut, and layered cedar artworks. Although she occasionally uses industrial substances like polyurethane resin, wood has been her primary material since she was handed some cedar beams by a fellow student in 1975. Though nonrepresentational, her monumental—yet intimate—sculptures make references to all kinds of things: the landscape, domestic objects, vernacular architecture, and the human body. Primal shapes of great presence and beauty, von Rydingsvard’s artworks have what Mark Stevens has described as a “forest magic about them, that dreamy, grand, and strangely austere aura of the woods found in Northern European culture.”

Von Rydingsvard was one of seven children born to a Ukrainian farmer and his Polish wife. The family was shuffled to nine post–World War II refugee camps for displaced Polish people in Germany and in 1950 immigrated to the United States, where they settled in Plainville, Connecticut. Memories of some of these powerful childhood experiences infuse von Rydingsvard’s work.

Von Rydingsvard has exhibited extensively, and her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Arts Center, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the High Museum of Art, among others. She has received many awards, among them, a Joan Mitchell Award; an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; two National Endowment for the Arts awards; exhibition prizes from the International Association of Art Critics; and the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture. Von Rydingsvard works in Brooklyn and lives in Manhattan.

About the AFA: The AFA is a nonprofit institution that organizes art exhibitions for presentation in museums around the world, publishes exhibition catalogues, and develops various educational programs. Over the years, millions of visitors in museums around the world have viewed more than 3,000 AFA exhibitions. For more information about the AFA’s exhibitions, publications, ArtTalks, and online resources, visit www.afaweb.org.

Official Website: http://www.afaweb.org/prog_events/vonrydingsvard.php