Ruth Asawa retrospective at Guggenheim Bilbao marks centenary

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is hosting the European leg of a retrospective dedicated to Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) on the centenary of her birth, running until September 13, 2026. The exhibition spans over half a century of her work, from 1947 to 2006, across ten sections. Asawa is renowned for her diaphanous wire sculptures that challenge conventional plastic notions. Born in California to a Japanese immigrant family, she was interned with her parents in a camp in 1942. In 1943, she studied at Black Mountain College in North Carolina under Josef Albers and Richard Buckminster Fuller, alongside classmate Robert Rauschenberg. During a summer in Mexico, she learned to 'knit' with wire by observing egg baskets sold in markets, fascinated by the material's transparency. The show features her iconic wire sculptures, clay and bronze casts (including 'life masks' molded from visitors' faces at her San Francisco home), folded papers, paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, and prints. Asawa, a child of persecuted immigrants, developed an abstract language inspired by resilience and connection to others and her environment, a genesis and evolution traced by this exhibition.