Biography
Ursula Schneider is a Swiss-born artist whose multifaceted practice encompasses painting, pastel drawing, mokuhanga woodcut, and mixed media, with subject matter drawn from decades of direct engagement with landscape. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1943, she studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich and the Keramische Fachschule (Ceramic School) in Bern, earning an undergraduate degree in ceramics before emigrating to the United States in 1968. She completed her MFA in Painting at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1972.
Schneider's career spans teaching, landscape advocacy, and studio practice. She taught painting at both the San Francisco Art Institute and Cooper Union in New York, and currently teaches painting at Sarah Lawrence College. She lived and worked in New York from 1980 to 2004 and now resides in Rockland County. Her artistic philosophy centers on drawing from direct observation in the landscape and finding an appropriate translation for each medium she works in.
Schneider's engagement with mokuhanga represents one dimension of a broader practice that also includes watercolor, soft pastel, graphite and ink drawing, and mixed media works on nylon and wood panels. Her mokuhanga woodcuts include a series of bear-themed prints from 2004, such as 'Grizzly,' 'Bear In Mind,' and 'Fore Bear' (each 14 by 17 inches), as well as landscape woodcuts inspired by Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where she traveled to document the wilderness through multiple media. Earlier woodcuts like 'A Trail: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge' (1999, 39 by 12 inches, edition of 20) and 'Canning River' (1996, 38 by 13 inches, edition of 30) demonstrate her characteristic elongated, panoramic format for capturing the expansive Arctic landscape.
Schneider co-curated the 2018 mokuhanga exhibition at the Buster Levi Gallery in Cold Spring, New York, alongside Lucille Tortora, and was included in the 'New York Mokuhanga' exhibition at the Kentler International Drawing Space in 2014. Her work has been featured through the U.S. Department of State's Art in Embassies program.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇨🇭Switzerland
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Subjects
- AnimalsLandscapesRivers & Lakes
- Works Indexed
- 4
Frequently Asked Questions
Ursula Schneider is a Swiss-born artist whose multifaceted practice encompasses painting, pastel drawing, mokuhanga woodcut, and mixed media, with subject matter drawn from decades of direct engagement with landscape. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1943, she studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich and the Keramische Fachschule (Ceramic School) in Bern, earning an undergraduate degree in ceramics before emigrating to the United States in 1968. She completed her MFA in Painting at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1972.
Ursula Schneider's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.
Ursula Schneider's prints frequently feature animals, landscapes, rivers & lakes.
