Ruth Asawa: Retrospective

by Janet Bishop (Editor), Cara Manes (editor), Anne Anlin Cheng (contributor)

A landmark survey of the wide-ranging practice of one of the twentieth century’s most innovative artists
 
Best known for her sinuous looped-wire sculptures, Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) used everyday materials to create endlessly innovative works in a variety of media over her more than 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 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, clay and bronze casts, paperfolds, paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, and prints. The book explores the ways in which her longtime San Francisco home and garden served as the epicenter of her creative practice, and highlights the ethos of collaboration and inclusivity that informed her numerous public sculpture commissions and unwavering dedication to arts advocacy.
 
Essays and other writings consider Asawa and her work within the context of modern abstract sculpture, through the lens of craft and the materiality of wire, and in relation to her Asian American identity and her 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 such as Josef Albers, Imogen Cunningham, and R. Buckminster Fuller, with whom she maintained enduring relationships.
 
Published in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
(April 5–September 2, 2025)

The Museum of Modern Art, New York
(October 19, 2025–February 7, 2026)

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain
(March 20–September 13, 2026)

Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Switzerland
(October 18, 2026–January 24, 2027)

Genres: Art

336 pages, Hardcover

Published April 1, 2025

Reviews

[Sheila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recently saw Ruth Asawa’s work featured in a current exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. There is an understated elegance to her abstract looped-wire sculptures inspired by natural and organic forms.

Wish I could afford to purchase one of her sculptures. But alas I could afford to purchase this book which was available as a companion to this excellent exhibition. This book covers her art work and it is beautifully presented.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

If seeing is doing, and doing is being, then being is also seeing. Asawa's art requires what she called the "total act" of seeing, grounding us in the raw experience of space and form beyond binary distinctions, circumventing language and its constraints, embracing the ineffable. The visual and sensorial experience solicited by her works exists independent of subject matter. Instead, through their intrinsic properties — movement, continuity, negative space, line, porosity, flexibility, modularity, and abstraction, among others — they create a world outside the known one, a world that can contain an object that defies definition.

this exhibition catalogue book of art and essays accompanies the Ruth Asawa retrospective exhibition that i saw at SFMOMA last year (and that is still on the road in Spain and Switzerland). thank you to Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc. for gifting this book when i went to visit their new gallery space at Minnesota Street Project earlier this year. it is one that i will treasure for a long time! i don’t understand all of the essays (some are more academically written), but i enjoyed the technical commentary and analysis alongside the biographical timelines and photographs.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Know how you go to an exhibit and think, omg I love this, and then take a photo of the huge book in the gift shop and think: omg I am going to get this from the library and READ it.
Well, for the first time I really did: Jessie and I LOVED the exhibit at MoMA: seeing Ruth's versatility, the breadth of her play, and all with her delicate eye and hand. And reading this made me even more amazed: she did this while raising 6 kids. Six!
Overall, alas, the writing here didn't illuminated much for me. I loved most the intimate chapter by Ruth Ozeki, and the timeline. And just spending so much time (I read this over the course of months!) with her elegant art.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

This entire book is lovely—from the essays at the beginning and end, to the structure and layout of how the art images are presented, to the cover design and quality of paper. I adore Ruth Asawa’s looped-wire sculptures, and now I appreciate her so much more as a person and artist of multiple mediums. It was interesting to learn that she was a student of Josef Albers. Her work is inspiring and beautiful. This book is fantastic.

[Céline · Rating 4.75 out of 5]

I discovered Ruth Asawa's work through the retrospective at Foundation Beyeler, but I bought the publication edited by MOMA, because they only had the one in German.

The publication is beautiful with the major works of Ruth Asawa.

Bonsoir.

[Aiden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great photos and essays. Excited to see these works in person at MoMA now that I know more about them!