Ursula SternberG (1925-2000)
“The life of an artist is a life of conviction, intention, total engagement with the work…totally thrown into the place where time ceases, the material becomes immaterial. Erased, actually".
- - Ursula Sternberg
Ursula Sternberg was an accomplished artist with a distinctive worldview. A child of the Holocaust. A lifelong student of music, literature and languages. An advocate for communities of artists. Adventurous wife and mother. A woman whose personal experiences, explorations, and even escapes, helped shape creative sensibilities that evolved into an eclectic aesthetic and a perceptive body of work spanning more than 60 years.
Both innately talented and dedicated to hard work, Sternberg was fluent in multiple artistic media, despite having no formal education in art. She drew inspiration from the world around her, the connections between people and places, and the wonder of living in times of darkness and light. Her prolific oeuvre includes paintings, drawings, illustrations, graphic designs, set designs, and fashion and textile designs. She was known for her pioneering spirit and an exuberance that belies the drama of her early years, some spent in hiding in wartime Europe. Her work has been extensively exhibited and collected across the U.S. and Europe.
Her textile designs entertain and amuse through whimsical images that evoke the beauty and simplicity of times gone by or imaginary worlds to explore. Included in her oeuvre are 150 swatches she designed in the 1950s, a collection filled with colorful energy and technical skill that suggest archival significance. Sternberg’s power of observation is evident in the precise and delicate details captured by her highly refined illustrative technique. Using Indian ink and body color, watercolor mixed with white pigment to make it opaque, Sternberg intensified a contrast with the transparency of the watercolor enhancing the impact of the overall presentation of the fabrics.
Sternberg understood the demands of designing around a specific fashion “moment,” while also working within the practical considerations of producing textiles themselves. Her attention to symmetry of patterns made her designs easy to repeat in production, and her use of collage added complexity and visual joie de vivre. As a collection, the swatches reflect Sternberg’s passion, personality and artistry.
Born in Germany in 1925 to a German-Jewish family, Sternberg was immersed in music and art as a young girl and began painting at an early age. The family homes were brimming with art and artists, creating a kaleidoscope of opportunity for a precocious child who had an eye for form and color and an agile hand. With the rise of the Nazi regime, the family fled Germany for the Netherlands in 1936. The family later moved to occupied Belgium where Sternberg, separated from her family for protection, lived in hiding in a neighbor’s attic. Once the family reunited after the war, Sternberg helped her father rebuild his clothing business in Brussels, an effort funded in part by the robust sale of handkerchiefs adorned with her thoughtful, playful hand-painted messages. American soldiers carried them home to loved ones as mementoes. This blend of imagination and good sense would spark Sternberg’s future career as a commercial artist. In her twenties, she worked for her father’s newly reestablished business at Forma, a designer of women’s undergarments and swimsuits.
Following WWII, Sternberg moved to London to work as a textile and fashion designer for Zika Ascher, a widely known creator of silk scarves designed by famous artists. An exhibition at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum highlighting Ascher’s fashion legacy included several of Sternberg’s designs. She also designed for brands like Caprice, Franco-Suisse, O.W. Loeb and Peter Pan Foundations. She travelled extensively through Europe and the U.S. through most of her adult life, always recording her experiences in her work and in illustrated journals.
In 1957, she married Jonathan Sternberg, an American orchestra conductor and professor of music. The couple travelled together on his conducting trips around the world, allowing Sternberg to absorb even more inspiration that would influence her work. They moved to New York City in the 1960s with their children, and Sternberg began incorporating the elements of the psychedelic era in her work. The family later settled near Philadelphia where they lived until Sternberg’s death in 2000. Sternberg found a vibrant community of artists wherever she lived, and she drew local artists to gather for socializing, art making and fellowship. She hosted weekly drawing sessions in her Chestnut Hill home, providing models and guidance for novice and expert artists.
The majority of Sternberg’s work is today held in museums and private collections including those at the New York Public Library, the Victoria & Albert Museum, The University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, the National Arts Club, the Museum Rade in Hamburg, and the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia. Private collections include those of the late Queen Elisabeth of Belgium and the late Right Honorable Edward Heath, of England. In 2014, Tricorn Books published an official biography, Between Two Worlds, the Life and Art of Ursula Sternberg, by Monique Seyler, an artist who had worked closely with Sternberg.