A sculpture by Ruth Asawa, called Untitled (S.175, Hanging Single-Lobed, Four-Layer Continuous Form within a Form), dated c. 1992.

American artist, educator, and arts activist 

 (1926–2013) is known for her extensive body of wire sculptures that challenge conventional notions of material and form through their emphasis on lightness and transparency. Born in rural California, Asawa was first exposed to professional artists while her family and other Japanese Americans were detained at Santa Anita, California, in 1942. Following her release from an internment camp in Rohwer, Arkansas, eighteen months later, she enrolled in 1943 in Milwaukee State Teachers College. Unable to receive her degree due to continued hostility against Japanese Americans, Asawa left Milwaukee in 1946 to study at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, then known for its progressive pedagogical methods and avant-garde aesthetic environment. Asawa's time at Black Mountain proved formative in her development as an artist, and she was particularly influenced by her teachers Josef Albers, Buckminster Fuller, and the mathematician Max Dehn. She also met architectural student Albert Lanier, whom she would marry in 1949 and with whom she would raise a large family and build a career in San Francisco. Asawa continued to produce art steadily over the course of more than a half century, creating a cohesive body of sculptures and works on paper that, in their innovative use of material and form, deftly synthesizes a wide range of aesthetic preoccupations at the heart of postwar art in America.

Asawa’s work has been exhibited widely since the early 1950s, including early solo exhibitions at Peridot Gallery, New York in 1954, 1956, and 1958. In 1965, Walter Hopps organized a solo exhibition of the artist’s sculptures and drawings at the Pasadena Art Museum (now Norton Simon Museum) in California, where Asawa completed a residency at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop the same year. Other solo presentations include those held at the San Francisco Museum of Art (1973); Fresno Art Museum, California (2001; traveled to Oakland Museum of California, 2002); de Young Museum, San Francisco (2006); Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas (2012); and Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena, California (2014).

In 2018 to 2019, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis presented 

, the first major museum exhibition of the artist’s work in more than a decade. An accompanying catalogue published by Pulitzer Arts Foundation and Yale University Press includes essays by Aruna D’Souza, Helen Molesworth, and Tamara H. Schenkenberg. The two-person exhibition, 

was on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2021. In 2022, 

 was on view at Modern Art Oxford, England, and later traveled to the Stavanger Kunstmuseum, Norway.

, a solo presentation of the artist’s work, opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and traveled to the Menil Drawing Institute, Houston, where it is currently on view until July 21, 2024.

The artist’s works have also been included in significant group exhibitions, including 

Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957

, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2015; traveled to Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, 2016-2017); 

, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015); 

Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947–2016

Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction

, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2017); 

The Pencil Is a Key: Drawings by Incarcerated Artists

, The Drawing Center, New York (2019); and 

In a Cloud, in a Wall, in a Chair: Six Modernists in Mexico at Midcentury

, Art Institute of Chicago (2019). A selection of the artist's work was presented at the 59th Venice Biennale, 

In addition to her wire sculptures, Asawa is well known for her public commissions, particularly in San Francisco and the wider Bay Area. These include the much beloved 

fountain in Ghirardelli Square (1966-1968) and the 

 outside the Grand Hyatt Union Square (1970-1973), the latter of which includes hundreds of baker’s clay images molded by local schoolchildren, friends, and other artists cast in bronze. Upon moving to San Francisco in 1949, Asawa, a firm believer in the radical potential of arts education from her time at Black Mountain College, devoted herself to expanding access to art-focused educational programs. She co-founded the Alvarado School Arts Workshop in 1968 and was instrumental in the creation of the first public arts high school in San Francisco in 1982, which was renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in her honor in 2010.

The Estate of Ruth Asawa has been represented by David Zwirner since 2017. The gallery’s inaugural solo exhibition of the artist’s work took place the same year in New York, and was accompanied by an extensive publication that includes texts by Tiffany Bell and Robert Storr and features an illustrated chronology. In 2020, the gallery’s London location presented 

, which was the first major presentation of the artist’s work outside of the United States. In 2021, 

was on view at the gallery’s 20th Street location in New York.

The artist’s work is represented in prominent museum collections, including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; de Young Museum, San Francisco; Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; San Jose Museum of Art, California; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Asawa has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards.

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Browse and inquire on available works for sale by artist Ruth Asawa, whose intricate woven sculpture and worked on paper reference sinuous organic forms and make innovative use of material and form.

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Installation view of the exhibition,  Ruth Asawa: All Is Possible, at David Zwirner in New York, dated 2021.

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Read more about Ruth Asawa, including excerpts from selected press articles and publications.

Ruth Asawa - Selected Press

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Wall Street Journal, profile by Marilyn Chase

High-Wire Artist Ruth Asawa Edges Into the Mainstream

The Art Newspaper, article by Jori Finkel

Lacma acquires major works by women through lively Collectors Committee Weekend

Frieze, article by Ann Reynolds

Ruth Asawa's Shadow Play

Hyperallergic, article by Danielle Wu

How Asian-American Artists Made a Mark on Abstract Expressionism

WNYC, review by Deborah Solomon

Re-thinking American Post-War Art

The New Yorker, review by Andrea K. Scott

Ruth Asawa Reshapes Art History

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Ruth Asawa

Untitled (BMC.95, In and Out)

Untitled (S.531, Hanging Six Lobed, Two Continuous Interlocking Forms)

Hanging sculpture—oxidized copper and brass wire

Untitled (S.068, Hanging, Single Lobe, with a Suspended Interior Sphere)

Untitled (S.757, Hanging Sphere), Untitled (S.758, Hanging Sphere), Untitled (S.759, Hanging Sphere)

Untitled (S.237, Hanging Six-Lobed, Interlocking Continuous Form)

Untitled (S.459, Hanging Open Form with a Disc, Four Upward Ears, and Four Downward Tails)

Untitled (WC.134, Self Portrait)

Untitled (S.073, Hanging Single Sphere, Five Layer Continuous Form within a Form)

Untitled (S.452, Hanging Tied-Wire, Five Branched Form Based on Nature)

Sun and Star

Untitled (S.066, Hanging Mobius Strip),

Untitled (S.272, Hanging Seven-Lobed, Continuous Interwoven Form, with Spheres within Two Lobes)

View a selection of artworks by American sculptor, educator, and arts activist Ruth Asawa, who is best known for her looped wire sculptures.

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