WANAFOTO: Ruth Asawa

Showing posts with label Ruth Asawa. Show all posts

18/10/25

Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective @ MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective

MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

October 19, 2025 – February 7, 2026

Installation view of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective

on view at The Museum of Modern Art

from October 19, 2025, through February 7, 2026

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Photo by Jonathan Dorado

Installation view of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective

on view at The Museum of Modern Art

from October 19, 2025, through February 7, 2026

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Photo by Jonathan Dorado

Installation view of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective

on view at The Museum of Modern Art

from October 19, 2025, through February 7, 2026

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Photo by Jonathan Dorado

The Museum of Modern Art presents Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective, the first major museum exhibition to fully consider every aspect of the artist’s expansive, groundbreaking practice, on view in the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Center for Special Exhibitions. Coinciding with the centennial of the artist’s birth, the exhibition includes some 300 objects that highlight the core values of experimentation and interconnectedness pervading all dimensions of Asawa’s practice. The retrospective spans the six decades of Asawa’s ambitious career, presenting a range of her work across mediums, including wire sculptures, bronze casts, paper folds, paintings, and a comprehensive body of works on paper. Artworks are accompanied by a rich array of archival materials—photographs, documents, and ephemera—that illuminate her public commissions, art advocacy, and meaningful, lasting relationships with members of her community. The exhibition follows a loose chronological arc, interwoven with thematic sections elaborating on the artist’s inspirations and methods.

“What’s exceptional about Asawa’s practice is the multiplicity of her artistic pursuits and the marvelous ability to turn the simplest things into subjects of lifelong creative contemplation,” said Cara Manes. “The exhibition aims to offer multiple points of entry into her work, reflecting what Asawa described as the ‘total act’ of artmaking.”

Ruth Asawa at Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective View,

San Francisco Museum of Art, 1973

Photograph by Laurence Cuneo

Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) was born in Norwalk, California, and raised on a farm. In the wake of Executive Order 9066 signed in 1942, the teenage Asawa and her family were unlawfully incarcerated in war relocation camps along with thousands of people of Japanese descent. After the end of World War II, Asawa enrolled in the experimental Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina, where she explored the artistic possibilities of ordinary materials. There, she developed a technique for looping wire informed by Mexican wire basketry, which she had observed firsthand as a student volunteer in Toluca. This invention would lead to her most consequential contribution to abstract sculpture in the 20th century: a radical body of suspended, intricate looped-wire sculptures. The exhibition begins with a selection of works from her time at Black Mountain College, including explorations of materials, color, and shape in drawings, collages, and prints such as Untitled (BMC.145, BMC Laundry Stamp) (c. 1948–49).

Installation view of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective

on view at The Museum of Modern Art

from October 19, 2025, through February 7, 2026

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Photo by Jonathan Dorado

Installation view of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective

on view at The Museum of Modern Art

from October 19, 2025, through February 7, 2026

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Photo by Jonathan Dorado

Ruth Asawa continued her material experimentation in wire and paper following her 1949 move to San Francisco, the city that would be the center of her artistic activities for the rest of her life, and where she established a tightly knit family and community. Shortly after her arrival there, she articulated the key motifs and shapes in her looped wire forms in works like Untitled (S.535, Hanging Five-Lobed Continuous Form within a Form with Spheres in the First and Fourth Lobes and a Teardrop Form in the Third Lobe) (1951), on view in the exhibition. She also expanded her range of techniques in drawing, printmaking, and paperfolding, while taking on various commercial design commissions and exhibiting regularly at the Peridot Gallery in New York. In the early 1960s, Ruth Asawa discovered a new method of working with wire by tying and splaying it in ways that evoke organic structures, as seen in works like Untitled (S.390, Hanging Tied-Wire, Double-Sided, Center-Tied, Multi-Branched Form with Curly Ends) (1963).

Ruth Asawa

Untitled (S.390 Hanging Tied-Wire, Double-Sided, Center-Tied,

Multi-Branched Form with Curly Ends), 1963

Copper wire. 20 × 20 × 20 in. (50.8 × 50.8 × 50.8 cm)

Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center,

Gift of Rita Newman

Installation view of Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective

on view at The Museum of Modern Art

from October 19, 2025, through February 7, 2026

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Photo by Jonathan Dorado

Ruth Asawa

Poppy, 1965

Lithograph. 30 1∕16 × 20 9∕16 in. (76.4 × 52.2 cm)

Publisher and printer: Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Los Angeles

Edition: proof outside the edition of 20

The Museum of Modern Art, New York,

Gift of Kleiner, Bell & Co., 1967

Ruth Asawa continued to experiment with natural forms during a residency at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in 1965, where she produced a portfolio of diverse, formally rigorous and experimental prints. Drawing from MoMA’s collection, a concentration of works from this portfolio are included in the exhibition, many of which are on view for the first time.

Parallel to her artistic experimentation, Ruth Asawa dedicated herself to her lifelong quest to integrate arts education and practice. One of Asawa’s most transformative projects was the Alvarado Arts Workshop, which started as a grassroots initiative and grew to a momentous movement that embedded vital arts-education programming in San Francisco Bay Area public school systems. Galleries in the exhibition feature archival material related to Asawa’s civic engagement, teaching practice and numerous collaborative public art projects, including Japanese American Internment Memorial (1994) commissioned by the city of San José. Focus on Asawa’s visionary pedagogy extends to the exhibition’s public programming.

Ruth Asawa

Untitled (PF.293, Bouquet from Anni Albers), early 1990s

Ink on paper. 40 × 26 in. (101.6 × 66 cm)

Private collection

A final gallery in the exhibition highlights the last decades of Asawa’s life, which were marked by a renewed dedication to a daily drawing practice. Ruth Asawa tenderly documented her surroundings, paying particular attention to the botanical forms around her, as seen in works such as Untitled (PF.293, Bouquet from Anni Albers) (early 1990s).

Ruth Asawa: A Retrospectiveis an exhibition partnership between the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA). The exhibition is organized by Cara Manes, Associate Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA and Janet Bishop, Thomas Weisel Family Chief Curator and Curator of Painting and Sculpture, SFMOMA; with Dominika Tylcz, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA; and Marin Sarvé-Tarr, Assistant Curator, and William Hernández Luege, Curatorial Associate, Painting and Sculpture, SFMOMA.

The exhibition was on view at SFMOMA (April 4 – September 2, 2025). After its presentation at MoMA, it will travel to Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain (March 20 – September 13, 2026); and Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland (October 18, 2026 – January 24, 2027).

MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

www.moma.org

21/09/25

Modern & Contemporary Art Fall Auctions @ Phillips Hong Kong

Modern & Contemporary Art Fall Auctions

Phillips Hong Kong

Auctions: 27 and 28 September 2025

Preview: 22 - 28 September 2025

On 27 and 28 September, Phillips will present Modern & Contemporary Art Fall Auctions in Hong Kong, held in celebration of the company’s 10th anniversary in Asia. Taking place on 27 September, the Evening Sale features exceptional works by the most prominent international artists, including Yoshitomo Nara, Zao Wou-Ki, Tom Wesselmann, Yayoi Kusama, Georges Mathieu, Andy Warhol, and Ruth Asawa, alongside cutting-edge works by in-demand young talents such as Hao Liang, Loie Hollowell, Lucas Arruda and Jonathan Gardner. The Day Sale on 28 September features a dynamic range of works—from established modern masters and blue-chip contemporary artists to rising talents. A key highlight is two exceptional private collections of Asian Modern Art: one includes rare works by Zao Wou-Ki, preserved in a private collection for over 75 years and never before seen by the public; the other showcases a remarkable selection of Southeast Asian pieces by Mai Trung Thứ. Collectors and art enthusiasts are invited to explore the works in person at Phillips’ West Kowloon Galleries during the public preview, which will be open from 22-28 September.

Danielle So, Hong Kong Head of Auctions, Phillips, and Rebecca Hu, Head of Sale, Modern & Contemporary Art, Phillips Hong Kong, jointly said: “This season’s sales present an exceptional opportunity for collectors to acquire outstanding works by the most influential blue-chip contemporary artists and post-war masters. Nearly two-thirds of the Evening Sale will feature works making their auction debut, with only nine pieces having appeared publicly in the past 16 years. As we celebrate our 10-year anniversary in Asia, this season’s Evening and Day Sales in Hong Kong hold special significance for us and for the collectors who have shared this remarkable journey over the past decade. Highlights include signature pieces long held in distinguished private collections, works with notable exhibition histories, and works of exceptional provenance — from a fresh-to-market 2000 Yoshitomo Nara, to Tom Wesselmann’s iconic work that once set the artist’s auction record and has been preserved in the same collection for 18 years, to Zao Wou-Ki’s monumental canvas with exceptional international exposure. We are equally proud to highlight works by visionary women artists in this season’s sales, presented in parallel with our neighbor M+’s special exhibition ‘Dream Rooms: Environments by Women Artists 1950s–Now’.”

LEADING HIGHLIGHTS

Yoshitomo Nara

Pinky, 2000

acrylic on canvas, 160 x 145 cm.

Image courtesy of Phillips

Estimate: HK$60,000,000-80,000,000/

US$7,690,000-10,260,000

The Evening Sale will be led by Yoshitomo Nara’s seminal work Pinky. Coming to the auction market for the very first time, this masterpiece was painted in the artist’s watershed year of 2000, the same year as Nara's two highest auction records. Out of 33 paintings the artist created in 2000, only 11 share Pinky’s arresting "head-and-shoulders" composition. Directly succeeding in Volume I of his most extensive catalogue raisonne, the present work is the first of only four Pinky subjects in Nara’s entire oeuvre and the purest distillation of his lifelong meditation on solitude.

Zao Wou-Ki

27.01.86, 1986

oil on canvas, 200 x 162 cm.

Image courtesy of Phillips

Estimate: HK$30,000,000 – 40,000,000/

US$3,850,000-5,130,000

Among the top lots of the Evening Sale is Zao Wou-Ki’s 27.01.86. In this work, he uses the attributes of ink—thickness, thinness, dryness, wetness—to construct a multi-dimensional composition of depth and expansiveness, symbolizing growth like a tree of life reaching into infinite space. Between 1985 and 1990, Zao produced several works in this vein, yet among these single-panel compositions, 27.01.86 stands out as one of the largest and most intricate. In 1988, he extended this vision in an abstract painting commissioned by the Seoul Olympic Committee to embody the Olympic spirit, a work that shares stylistic affinities with 27.01.86. The present work holds a rare place in Zao Wou-Ki’s oeuvre for its exceptional international exposure. Shortly after its completion, it was featured in the artist’s large-scale solo exhibition at Galerie Artcurial in Paris in 1988, and later, in 2004, in a major retrospective at Tokyo’s Bridgestone Museum of Art. It was also included in Art and Artists of 20th Century China, the collection of Oxford fellow and art historian Michael Sullivan. These recognitions underscore the painting’s power to transcend cultural and geographic boundaries.

Tom Wesselmann

Smoker #17, 1975

oil on shaped canvas, 243.8 x 332.7 cm.

Image courtesy of Phillips

Estimate: HK$ 20,000,000 - 30,000,000/

US$ 2,560,000 - 3,850,000

Also among the leading highlights of this season’s Evening Sale is Tom Wesselmann’s Smoker #17 from his iconic Smoker series — a work that, when last offered at auction in May 2007, set a world record for the artist. A central figure in the American Pop Art movement, Wesselmann began the Smoker series in 1967, marking a pivotal evolution in his exploration of sensuality, form, and painterly detail. With Smoker #1 now in MoMA’s permanent collection, the series remains a defining chapter in his oeuvre. Inspired by a spontaneous moment during his Mouth series studies, Wesselmann’s addition of a lit cigarette and curling smoke introduced heightened eroticism and visual complexity. Smoker #17 captures this shift with a meticulously balanced composition — voluptuous red lips, a poised hand, and languid smoke — evoking both cinematic allure and psychological intensity.

VISIONARY WOMEN IN ART

In a market where works by women artists continue to command global attention, Phillips presents an extraordinary roster of the most celebrated female voices in contemporary art across its Evening and Day Sales. Highlights include a diverse range of works by Yayoi Kusama — from her iconic Infinity Nets canvas to a hand-painted denim jacket. Equally significant is the debut of Japanese-American artist Ruth Asawa’s work at auction in Hong Kong, building on the momentum of her acclaimed solo exhibition in the city last Fall. A transformative figure in the art world, Ruth Asawa has been the subject of celebrated museum retrospectives, and her influence will be further cemented with a landmark exhibition opening at New York’s MoMA in October 2025.

Ruth Asawa

Untitled S.013

(Hanging Single-Lobed, Five-Layer

Continuous Form within a Form), 1987

hanging sculpture, woven oxidised copper wire,

20 x 29 x 29 cm.

Image courtesy of Phillips

Estimate: HK$ 2,200,000 - 4,200,000/

US$ 282,000 - 538,000

Ruth Asawa's metal wire weaving blurs the boundary between sculpture and craft, between refinement and popular appeal. During World War II, her Japanese heritage led to her internment in a detention camp; the shadow cast by barbed wire was entrapped within her childhood memories. In subsequent creations, she transformed this symbol of restraint into a metaphor of connection. In Untitled S.013 offered in this season’s Evening Sale, she uses weaving techniques inspired by Mexican traditions to create forms that balance transparency and density, inviting light and air into the sculptural experience.

Loie Hollowell

Hung (down), 2016

oil and acrylic on linen mounted to panel,

121.9 x 91.4 cm.

Image courtesy of Phillips

Estimate: HK$ 4,500,000 - 6,500,000/

US$ 577,000 - 833,000

Loie Hollowell’s Hung (Down) is a pivotal work that showcases her distinctive fusion of geometric abstraction and corporeal symbolism. It uses vibrant colour and symmetrical form to evoke themes of femininity, sexuality, and political tension—particularly in response to the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the media’s treatment of Hillary Clinton. Presented in her sold-out solo show Mother Tongue, the painting marks the beginning of her hybrid approach, blending painting with sculptural elements. It also draws on the legacy of pioneering female artists like Agnes Pelton and Georgia O’Keeffe, incorporating spiritual symbolism and sensual forms that echo their iconic visual languages.

20TH CENTURY MODERN MASTERS

In addition to Zao Wou-Ki’s 27.01.86, this season’s Hong Kong Sales presents an exceptional selection of Modern works by 20th-century masters from both East and West. Highlights include pieces by Georg Baselitz, Pierre Soulages, Salvador Dalí, and Georges Mathieu, Chu Teh-Chun, alongside two outstanding private collections of Asian Modern Art, featuring rare and important works by Zao Wou-Ki and Mai Trung Thứ.

Georges Mathieu

Air de France, 1967

oil on canvas, 175.7 x 451 cm.

Image courtesy of Phillips

Estimate: HK$ 3,000,000 - 5,000,000/

US$ 385,000 - 641,000

Georges Mathieu stands as a defining force of post-war abstraction, credited with pioneering the movement he named “lyrical abstraction.” Rejecting geometric rigidity, he championed pure, unrestrained gesture — sweeping calligraphic lines executed with long brushes or paint applied directly from the tube in bursts of immediacy and velocity. Celebrated through major retrospectives and public commissions in the 1960s–70s, Georges Mathieu expanded his influence into tapestry, sculpture, architecture, and design. This monumental canvas offered in this season’s Evening Sale, created on commission for Air France and unveiled at an exhibition inaugurated by French cultural minister André Malraux. It encapsulates his philosophy of “no preconceived form” and the ecstatic, Dionysian energy that defined his most iconic works.

Zao Wou-Ki

Untitled, 1948

oil on cardboard, 37 x 46 cm.

Image courtesy of Phillips

Estimate: HK$ 2,000,000 - 3,000,000/

US$ 256,000 - 385,000

In the Day Sale, Phillips presents six rare works by Zao Wou-Ki from the Bottemer family collection. Upon arriving in Paris in 1948, Zao formed a close friendship with Claude Bottemer, a French sculptor, and his wife, an early bond that profoundly shaped his formative years in France. The works in this collection bear intimate witness to that friendship, offering a glimpse of Zao’s artistic journey during his first years abroad. Carefully preserved in the family’s private collection for more than 75 years and never before seen by the public, these pieces reveal a rich spectrum of creative exploration. A highlight of the collection is Untitled, a standout from 1948 in which Zao begins to depart from figurative and traditional perspective.

Chu Teh-Chun

Transparence voil, 2003

1920-2014

oil on canvas, 130 x 96.5 cm.

Image courtesy of Phillips

Estimate: HK$ 2,000,000 - 3,000,000/

US$ 256,000 - 385,000

Presented in Day Sale, Transparence voilée exemplifies Chu Teh-Chun’s lyrical abstraction, with translucent layers of oil pigment and fluid, calligraphic brushwork that evokes movement, memory, and dreamlike serenity. Featured prominently in the 2004 exhibition Chu Teh-Chun and His Universe at the University Museum and Art Gallery in Hong Kong, the work highlights Chu’s mastery of light and his unique ability to bridge Eastern and Western artistic traditions, solidifying his legacy in both French and Chinese art history.

Mai Trung Thứ

Walk in the Garden, 1971

gouache on silk, in artist’s frame, work 57.5 x 31 cm.

Estimate: HK$ 800,000 - 1,200,000/

US$ 103,000 - 154,000

Mai Trung Thu was a pioneering figure in Vietnam’s progressive art movement of the 1930s, among the first to receive formal Western art training at the School of Fine Arts of Indochina alongside peers such as Le Pho, Vu Cao Dam, and Le Thi Luu, and one of the earliest Vietnamese painters to build a successful career in Paris. Renowned for his refined silk paintings that blended Eastern and Western aesthetics, he captured the poetic essence of everyday life through images of graceful women, children, and intimate family scenes, helping to shape the identity of modern Vietnamese art. Walk in the Garden offered in this season’s Day Sale epitomises this vision, combining folk-inspired imagery with modernist abstraction in a balanced composition of flat planes, elegant silhouettes, and delicate contours, evoking a nostalgic, idealised vision of Vietnam.

POP ART PIONEERS, FROM WARHOL TO MURAKAMI

Andy Warhol

Hearts Pink, 1982

acrylic, silkscreen ink and diamond dust on canvas,

38 x 38 cm.

Image courtesy of Phillips

Estimate: HK$ 1,600,000 - 2,400,000/

US$ 205,000 - 308,000

In early 1979, Andy Warhol produced a series of small-scale heart paintings inspired by Valentine’s Day motifs, originally conceived as gifts for friends at Studio 54. Although Warhol had occasionally incorporated heart imagery as early as the 1950s, it wasn’t until the early 1980s that he revisited the theme in a more systematic and sustained way, creating multiple series. Hearts Pink offered in the Evening Sale belongs to his later period, distinguished by the use of universal symbols—such as skulls and dollar signs—rendered in bold colours and visually arresting compositions. More than a simple portrayal of a heart, Hearts Pink exemplifies Warhol’s quintessential Pop Art strategy: the deconstruction and reinvention of emotional symbols through a lens of cultural critique and aesthetic innovation.

Takashi Murakami

I stare into your eye, 2020

acrylic on canvas, diameter 150 cm.

Image courtesy of Phillips

Estimate: HK$ 3,500,000 - 5,500,000/

US$ 449,000 - 705,000

Takashi Murakami, a pioneering figure of the Superflat Movement at the turn of the millennium, is renowned for merging fine art with pop culture through vibrant, anime- and manga-inspired works that critique consumerism, history, and identity. His playful yet incisive aesthetic was exemplified in I stare into your eyes, a standout piece offered in this season’s Day Sale, which explored the layered visual language of Superflat and the enduring influence of Japanese ceramic arts. With its vividly coloured concentric circles, the work invites viewers into a paradoxical realm of superficiality that demands deeper reflection.

CHINESE CONTEMPORARY ART

Chinese contemporary art — particularly works by artists born between the 1970s and 1990s — has attracted strong interest and spirited bidding at Phillips’ Hong Kong Auctions in recent seasons, achieving impressive sell-through rates. This season, Phillips is delighted to present a compelling selection of Chinese contemporary works, including Zeng Fanzhi, Huang Yuxing, Hao Liang, Yue Minjun, Fang Yuan, Chen Fei, Xiyao Wang, and more.

Hao Liang

Butterfly City, 2010

ink and colour on silk, 166 x 98 cm.

Image courtesy of Phillips

Estimate: HK$ 3,800,000 - 5,800,000

US$ 487,000 - 744,000

Offered in the Evening Sale, Hao Liang’s Butterfly City unfolds from a bird’s‑eye view, revealing a silent classical city where butterflies alone drift through the air, their wings casting shadows like ghosts of history or flames of life. Inspired by the metamorphic vision of “Clarice” in Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, the work transforms literary allegory into a dreamlike rebirth of the ancient city, poised between lightness and weight, the fleeting and the eternal. Painted on silk with meticulous gongbi brushwork, Hao inherits the precision of Song and Yuan boundary painting yet breaks from traditional spatial logic to create a surreal symbolic order. The butterflies infuse the scene with cyclical renewal, awakening classical technique with the vitality of a contemporary fable. Bridging Eastern and Western perspectives, ancient and modern aesthetics, the work hovers between reality and illusion — a cross‑cultural love poem to memory.

Modern & Contemporary Art Hong Kong Evening Sale

Date: 7pm HKT, 27 September 2025

Modern & Contemporary Art Hong Kong Day Sale

Date: 2pm HKT, 28 September 2025

Hong Kong Preview: 22-28 September 11:00-19:00| G/F, WKCDA Tower, West Kowloon Cultural District, No. 8 Austin Road West

Location: G/F, WKCDA Tower, West Kowloon Cultural District, No. 8 Austin Road West, Kowloon, Hong Kong

PHILLIPS HONG KONG

www.phillips.com

12/04/25

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective Exhibition @ SFMOMA, San Francisco - MoMA, NYC - Guggenheim Bilbao - Fondation Beyeler

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

April 5 – September 2, 2025

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) presents Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, the first major national and international museum retrospective of the groundbreaking work of RUTH ASAWA (1926–2013). Premiering at SFMOMA, this first posthumous retrospective features the entire spectrum of the artist’s awe-inspiring practice. Sculpture, drawings, prints, paintings, design objects and archival material from US-based public and private collections offer an in-depth look at her expansive output and its inspirations, exploring the ways her longtime San Francisco home and garden served as the epicenter of her creative universe, and highlighting the ethos of collaboration and inclusivity that informed her numerous public sculpture commissions and unwavering dedication to arts advocacy.

“Ruth Asawa: Retrospective is deeply aligned with SFMOMA’s vision to be both local and global—presenting Bay Area artists with profound significance that also have the potential to be highly impactful and relevant on an international scale,” said Christopher Bedford, Helen and Charles Schwab Director of SFMOMA. “This exhibition provides an opportunity to celebrate the legendary Ruth Asawa, who was both a widely acclaimed artist and a hometown inspiration whose impact can be very much felt today.”

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective features more than 300 works spanning six decades of the artist’s career, engaging in the full range of materials and techniques that Asawa employed. Her signature looped-wire sculptures shares gallery space with lesser-known works in other mediums that supply valuable insight into the interconnectedness and relentlessly experimental nature of her artistic vision. In addition to Asawa’s own work, the exhibition includes a select number of works by peers and mentors with whom Ruth Asawa engaged in creative dialogue including Josef Albers, Imogen Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Ray Johnson, Hazel Larsen Archer, Merry Renk and Marguerite Wildenhain.

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective is an exhibition partnership between SFMOMA and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) and co-curated by Janet Bishop, Thomas Weisel Family Chief Curator and Curator of Painting and Sculpture, SFMOMA and Cara Manes, Associate Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA.

“It is an immense privilege to present the full range of Ruth Asawa’s life’s work through this retrospective,” said Janet Bishop. “Not only was Asawa an exceptionally talented artist—among the most distinguished sculptors of the 20th century and a major contributor in so many other mediums—but she lived her values in everything she did, modeling the importance of the arts and opening up creative opportunities for others at every turn.”

RUTH ASAWA RETROSPECTIVE

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective unfolds across more than 14,000 square feet in the Barbara and Gerson Bakar and Mimi and Peter Haas Galleries on SFMOMA’s fourth floor. Following a loosely chronological arc, a dozen sections present Asawa’s extensive body of work within the unfolding narrative of her life and career.

Ruth Asawa was born in Norwalk, California, in 1926 and raised on a farm. In 1942, the teenage Asawa and her family were unjustly displaced to incarceration camps, along with many other people of Japanese descent, in the wake of Executive Order 9066. After the end of World War II, Asawa enrolled in the experimental Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina. The opening gallery of the exhibition will highlight her highly generative studies at the college from 1946 to 1949. With the encouragement of Black Mountain College teachers including Josef Albers, Buckminster Fuller and Max Dehn, Asawa flourished, creating drawings with undulating lines, repeating patterns and studies of positive and negative space that would resonate in later work. This gallery also features Asawa’s 1947 trip to Toluca, Mexico, during which she learned a looped-wire technique used for basketry that would prove fundamental to her sculptural practice of the following decade and beyond.

In 1949, Ruth Asawa moved from North Carolina to San Francisco—the city she would call home for the rest of her life—and exhibited at SFMOMA (then the San Francisco Museum of Art) for the first time. A gallery devoted to the 1950s in San Francisco will reveal a decade of tremendous productivity, including the development of the artist’s signature innovation—hanging looped-wire sculptures with forms within forms and interlocking lobes, no two alike—that she exhibited locally, nationally and internationally. An adjacent gallery will include Asawa’s designs for commercial projects including fabric patterns and wallpaper.

In 1962, Ruth Asawa received the gift of a desert plant that inspired her next major body of work: tied-wire sculptures, some wall-mounted, some suspended and some displayed directly on the floor. A gallery focused on nature will examine the artist’s deep affinity with the organic world and its relationship to her practice in both two and three dimensions.

In a shift in register from the unfolding of Asawa’s artistic innovations across time, the exhibition features a gallery evoking the Noe Valley home and studio that was the hub of the artist’s creative and family life for more than half a century, from the early 1960s until her passing in 2013. This section reconvenes a grouping of wire sculptures of various forms and sizes that Asawa is known to have hung from the rafters in her living room, as well as a selection of the artist’s sketchbooks and examples of her material experiments in clay, copper, electroplating and bronze. Highlights of the space are Asawa’s original hand-carved redwood doors from the house and works she displayed by other artists, including Josef Albers, Ray Johnson, Peggy Tolk-Watkins and Marguerite Wildenhain.

Another section spanning several decades features the artist’s miniatures: a dozen of her tiniest wire sculptures—the smallest measuring just over one inch in diameter—that are installed in cases that invite close looking. The continued inspiration of the artist’s garden is revealed in a final gallery featuring a stunning array of Asawa’s late drawings of plants, bouquets and flowers produced during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Throughout the retrospective, Asawa’s contemporaneous arts advocacy and public sculpture practice from the 1960s forward are highlighted. Video, photographs, maquettes and archival materials illuminate Asawa’s fountains at San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square (Andrea, 1968); Union Square (San Francisco Fountain, 1973); and Bayside Plaza, Embarcadero (Aurora, 1986), as well as projects connected to Japanese American incarceration in San Jose (Japanese American Internment Memorial, 1990–94) and at San Francisco State University (Garden of Remembrance, 2000-02).

RUTH ASAWA RETROSPECTIVE

EXHIBITION VENUES + DATES 2025 - 2027

SFMOMA: April 5–September 2, 2025

MoMA, NY: October 19, 2025–February 7, 2026

Guggenheim Bilbao: March 20–September 13, 2026

Fondation Beyeler: October 18, 2026–January 24, 2027

RUTH ASAWA RETROSPECTIVE - CATALOGUE

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective

Edited by Janet Bishop and Cara Manes

Published by SFMOMA / Yale University Press

336 Pages, 9.37 x 12.70 in, 325 color + b-w illustrations

Hadcover - IBSN: 9780300278859

Published: April 2025

An extensively illustrated 336-page catalogue published by SFMOMA in association with Yale University Press accompanies the exhibition. Texts on key aspects of Asawa’s art and creative practice contextualize this visual survey. Lead essayists include Anne Anlin Cheng, Janet Bishop, Cara Manes, and Jennie Yoon and Marci Kwon. Additional contributors include Genji Amino, Isabel Bird, Caitlin Haskell, Charlotte Healy, Corey Keller, Ruth Ozeki, Marin Sarvé-Tarr, Jeffrey Saletnik and Dominika Tylcz.

RUTH ASAWA RETROSPECTIVE - ORGANIZATION

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective is an exhibition partnership between the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA). The exhibition is co-curated by Janet Bishop, Thomas Weisel Family Chief Curator and Curator of Painting and Sculpture, SFMOMA; and Cara Manes, Associate Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA; with Marin Sarvé-Tarr, Assistant Curator, and William Hernández Luege, Curatorial Associate, Painting and Sculpture, SFMOMA; and Dominika Tylcz, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Department of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA.

SFMOMA - SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

www.sfmoma.org

24/09/23

Ruth Asawa @ Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC + Menil Drawing Institute, Houston - Ruth Asawa Through Line

Ruth Asawa Through Line

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

September 16, 2023 - January 15, 2024

Ruth Asawa Through Line is the first exhibition to examine Ruth Asawa’s oeuvre through the lens of her lifelong drawing practice. Co-organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Menil Collection, this presentation reveals the complexity and richness of the materials and processes she experimented with, emphasizing the foundational role that drawing played in developing her distinct visual language. While now widely recognized as a sculptor, Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) practiced drawing daily, referring to the act as her “greatest pleasure and the most difficult.” Through drawing, Ruth Asawa explored the world around her and the boundaries of the medium itself, turning everyday encounters into moments of profound beauty and endowing ordinary objects with new aesthetic possibilities.

Positioning drawings, collages, and watercolors alongside stamped prints, copper foil works, and sketchbooks, the exhibition exposes the breadth of Ruth Asawa’s innovative practice through over one hundred works from public and private collections, many of which have not been previously exhibited. Organized thematically, the presentation begins with foundational lessons the artist absorbed and built upon at Black Mountain College in the late 1940s. Subsequent galleries examine the function of repetition and the development of specific motifs and approaches—from the Greek meander to the paper fold—and how they recur throughout her work. The exhibition shows how drawing emerged as a cornerstone of Ruth Asawa’s practice in San Francisco, later becoming a key component of her role as an educator and community leader in the Bay Area. Surveying the artist’s impressive range and expansive approach, Ruth Asawa Through Line offers an unparalleled window into Ruth Asawa’s exploratory and resourceful approach to materials, line, surface, and space.

This exhibition is co-organized by Kim Conaty, Steven and Ann Ames Curator of Drawings and Prints at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Edouard Kopp, John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation Chief Curator of the Menil Drawing Institute, with Scout Hutchinson, Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum, and Kirsten Marples, Curatorial Associate at the Menil Drawing Institute.

After the exhibition closes at the Whitney, it will travel to the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston.

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART

99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY 10014

whitney.org