Ruth Asawa: Retrospective

Best known for her extraordinary hanging wire sculptures, Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) continuously transformed everyday materials into innovative artworks in a variety of media over her six-decade-long career, from her student days at the experimental Black Mountain College in the 1940s through her mature years in her adopted home city of San Francisco.

This extensively illustrated volume, published in conjunction with the artist’s first major international retrospective, explores the astonishing expansiveness of Asawa’s work, from the abstract looped-wire sculptures for which she garnered national attention in the 1950s to her nature-inspired tied-wire pieces, bronze casts, paperfolds, paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, and prints. Essays offer an in-depth look at her multifaceted practice and the many inspirations that informed it, examine the ways in which her longtime San Francisco home and garden served as the epicenter of her creative life, and highlight the ethos of collaboration and inclusivity that guided her numerous public sculptures and unwavering dedication to arts advocacy. Other writings consider Asawa and her work through the lens of the racialized history of ornament and the materiality of wire, and in the context of her Asian American identity and personal history as a Japanese American who was incarcerated with her family during World War II. Focus texts illuminate the connections between Asawa and key artistic figures including Josef Albers, Imogen Cunningham, and Buckminster Fuller, with whom she maintained enduring relationships.