Astrid Zydower

Astrid Zydower MBE (4 August 1930 – 27 May 2005) was a British sculptor.

Biography Zydower was born in 1930 in a small German village in the Prussian province Posen-West Prussia, what is now within the borders of Poland. As a Jewish family, the Zydowers faced discrimination and oppression under the Nazi government so in 1939 the three Zydower children were evacuated to Britain on the last Kindertransport train to leave the territory before the start of World War II. When she graduated Zydower was offered a job as an assistant to Jacob Epstein but refused the role as she had already been commissioned to work on the Observer Film Exhibition and the Telford Bicentenary Exhibition by Richard Buckle. In 1968 she was awarded an MBE and for many years lived in a large house, that contained her studio, in Kentish Town in north London and it was there that she died in 2005.