Visitors to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn may be familiar with the large, dark, tornado-shaped sculpture looming beneath the oculus. The monumental piece anchors the space, balancing conflicting feelings of timelessness, and unease. Titled Ona (2013), which translates from Polish as “she,” the work is by Ursula von Rydingsvard and is one of her largest bronze sculptures to date. Born in 1942 to a Polish mother and a Ukrainian father, von Rydingsvard spent several childhood years in a series of German refugee camps after World War II. She immigrated with her family to the United States in 1950 and now maintains a large studio in Brooklyn. At age eighty-three, after more than five decades of sustained work, she shows no sign of slowing down.
At the Bruce Museum exhibition, Ursula von Rydingsvard: states of becoming, her work feels less ominous and more attuned to the human scale, in contrast with Ona as well as her two monumental wooden sculptures at Storm King Art Center, whose forms echo the scale and drama of canyons or rock cliffs. For Paul (1990–92/2001), the large black sculpture at Storm King, is dedicated to her husband. A sense of loss permeates much of the work in states of becoming, though it is expressed on a more intimate scale.
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Image credit: Installation view: Ursula von Rydingsvard: states of becoming, Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut, 2025-26. Courtesy Bruce Museum.