RUTH ASAWA

Early Years

Born in 1926 in Norwalk, California, Ruth Asawa’s family were farmers growing seasonal crops (but being Japanese immigrants, they were unable to own their own land in the state). She studied origami at the Japanese cultural school she attended on Saturdays. As part of the US government’s detention of Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbour, Asawa’s father was arrested and sent to a camp in New Mexico in February 1942. In April the same year, Asawa, her mother and five siblings were sent to the Santa Anita racetrack in Arcadia, California, where they were forced to live in stables. Among their fellow prisoners were animators from the Walt Disney Studios, who taught art—when the Asawa family was moved to a camp in Arkansas, Ruth continued to draw. In 1943, a Quaker organisation arranged a place for her at Milwaukee State Teachers College, where she trained as an art teacher but could not graduate because no school would give a Japanese American work experience. She then went to Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where she studied painting and the use of colour with Joseph Albers and began to find her feet as an artist.

Ruth Asawa: Artworks

Ruth Asawa visited Mexico in 1947 and learned from local weavers how to make wire baskets—these skills formed the basis of her sculptural practice, which she expanded to create forms inspired by nature (trees, corals). She said that her tied-wire works evolved from her attempts to draw plant forms: beginning with a central “stem” which she then divided into “branches”. This element of her artistic practice then evolved further into the creation of abstract forms. But while primarily known for her wire work, she also produced drawings, paintings and collages of paper and wood (for example, Untitled (c 1946)) and bronze sculptures inspired by clay forms.

• Number 1–1955 is a classic example of the way Ruth Asawa’s sculptures play with light. Hanging from the ceiling, the work’s exterior and interior spaces create shadows (the large outer structure houses smaller shapes inside). Owing to faulty metal in the original, Asawa recreated the work in 1958.
• Asawa developed an interest in cast forms during the 1960s: her first public commission in San Francisco, the Andrea mermaid fountain (1968) features a tail originally made from wire loops, then dipped in way and finally cast in bronze.
• Asawa spent a two-month residency at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in 1965, during which time she produced 54 experimental prints, featuring flowers, family members, trees and chairs. She worked directly on to aluminium plates or slabs of limestone using crayon or liquid ink.

Ruth Asawa: Select Public Commissions

• Andrea, Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco (1968)
• Growth, Bethany Centre Senior Housing, San Francisco (1969)
• San Francisco Fountain, Hyatt Hotel Union Square, San Francisco (1973)
• Hagiwara Plaque for the Japanese Tea Garden, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco (1974)
• Origami Fountains, Nihonmachi, Buchannan Mall, San Francisco (1976)
• San Francisco Yesterday and Today, Ramada Renaissance Hotel (now Parc 55 Hilton Hotel), San Francisco (1984)
• Aurora, Bayside Plaza, San Francisco (1986)
• Old Courthouse Square Fountain, Santa Rosa, California (1987)
• History of Wine, Beringer Winery, St. Helena, California (1988)
• Japanese American Internment Memorial, San Jose, California (1994)
• Garden of Remembrance, San Francisco State University (2002)

Ruth Asawa: Select Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Ruth Asawa, Peridot Gallery, New York City (1954, 1956, 1958)
• Ruth Asawa, Pasadena Museum of Art (1965)
• Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective View, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1973)
• Ruth Asawa, Cedar Street Gallery, Santa Cruz (1979)
• Ruth Asawa, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco (2005)
• The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa: Contours in the Air, de Young Museum, San Francisco (2006)
• Ruth Asawa in Sonoma County, Sonoma County Museum, Santa Rosa (2008)
• Ruth Asawa, David Zwirner, New York City (2017)
• Ruth Asawa: Inside the Living Room, Menil Drawing Institute, Houston (2018)
• Ruth Asawa: A Line Can Go Anywhere, David Zwirner, London (2020)
• The Faces of Ruth Asawa, Cantor Arts Centre, Stanford University, Palo Alto (2022)
• Ruth Asawa: Doing Is Living, David Zwirner, Hong Kong (2024)
• Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2026)

Select Group Exhibitions

• Media Explored 1967, International Gallery, Memphis (1967)
• Four Artists: Ruth Asawa, Ida Dean, Merry Renk, Marguerite Wildenhain, San Francisco Museum of Art (1954)
• Annual Exhibition: Paintings, Sculpture, Watercolours, Drawings, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City (1958)
• Japanese-American Women Artists: Fibre & Metal, Evergreen Galleries, Olympia, Washington (1984)
• Bay Area Greats, Syntax Gallery, Palo Alto (1992)
• The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC (2010)
• Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction, The Museum of Modern Art, New York City (2017)
• Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950-2019, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City (2019–2022)
• No Monument: In the Wake of the Japanese American Incarceration, The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York City (2022)
• Women and Abstraction: 1741–Now, Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover (2023)
• David Zwirner: 30 Years, David Zwirner, Los Angeles (2024)
• Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (2026)

Further Reading

• Ruth Asawa’s Instagram
• Ruth Asawa’s official website
• Ruth Asawa’s obituary from The New York Times
• 2022 profile from Artfund
• Artist profile at David Zwirner

Ruth Asawa FAQs

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