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 Switzerland, she studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich and the Keramische Fachschule 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 observation in the landscape, seeking what she describes as the 'appropriate translation for the medium used' in each work.
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 the early 2000s, such as 'Grizzly,' 'Bear In Mind,' and 'Fore Bear' (all 2004, 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 panoramic format, stretching wide horizontally to capture the expansive Arctic landscape.
Schneider co-curated the 2018 mokuhanga exhibition at the Buster Levi Gallery alongside Lucille Tortora, and was included in the 'New York Mokuhanga' exhibition at the Kentler International Drawing Space in 2014. Her work is held in the collections of the UC Berkeley Art Museum, the U.S. Department of State, and UBS Securities, and she is represented in the Kentler International Drawing Space's Flatfiles collection.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇨🇭Switzerland
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- 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 Switzerland, she studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich and the Keramische Fachschule 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 is a contemporary printmaker whose work has been acquired by museum collections, confirming institutional recognition. Museum representation supports collector confidence. Prices range from $200 for smaller works to $5,000 for major compositions. Most prints sell in the $500–$2,000 range. Museum-collected contemporary printmakers represent a strong value proposition, as institutional validation often precedes market appreciation.
