Ruth Asawa Retrospective at SFMOMA Explores Six Decades of Wire Sculpture and Wartime Internment
In April 2024, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art unveiled a significant retrospective of Ruth Asawa's artistry, featuring more than 300 works. This exhibition highlights her creations over a span of sixty years, including wire sculptures, watercolors, monoprints, and drawings. Asawa's narrative includes her family's internment during World War II, initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's orders in 1941. At the age of 16, she was relocated to Santa Anita and subsequently to Rohwer. Her artistic education began with Disney artists and progressed at both Milwaukee State Teachers College and Black Mountain College from 1946 to 1949. Notable pieces include "Untitled S.250," created around 1955. In 2024, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts posthumously, following her passing in 2013 at 87.
Key facts
- The retrospective includes over 300 works spanning six decades of Ruth Asawa's career.
- Asawa was interned during World War II at the Santa Anita racetrack and Rohwer Relocation Center.
- She studied at Black Mountain College from 1946 to 1949 under Josef Albers and Buckminster Fuller.
- A 1947 trip to Mexico inspired her wire weaving technique after seeing handwoven baskets.
- She married architect Albert Lanier in 1949 and had six children while continuing her art practice.
- Her work was selected for the 1955 São Paulo Biennial by SFMOMA founding director Grace McCann Morley.
- Asawa founded a public arts high school in San Francisco in 1982, renamed in her honor in 2010.
- She posthumously received the National Medal of Arts in 2024, over a decade after her 2013 death.
Entities
Artists
- Ruth Asawa
- Josef Albers
- Anni Albers
- John Cage
- Merce Cunningham
- Willem de Kooning
- Elaine de Kooning
- Robert Rauschenberg
- Frida Kahlo
- Diego Rivera
- Philip Guston
- Louise Bourgeois
- Dore Ashton
- Arthur Solway
- Elaine Schmitt
- Elizabeth Schmitt
- Albert Lanier
- Buckminster Fuller
- Grace McCann Morley
- Elizabeth Smith Jennerjahn
- Marguerite Wildenhain
- Frank Gehry
- Paul Klee
- Max Dehn
- Rondal Partridge
- Nat Farbman
- Henry Weverka
- Henri Matisse
- Paa Joe
- Calder
- Giacometti
- Lucy McKenzie
- Paul Lanier
- Ruth Aiko Asawa
Institutions
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
- SFMOMA
- Milwaukee State Teachers College
- Black Mountain College
- Walt Disney Studios
- Quaker American Friends Service Committee
- Peridot Gallery
- M.H. de Young Memorial Museum
- de Young Legion of Honor Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco
- Museum of Modern Art in New York
- São Paulo Biennial
- Time
- Vogue
- Art News
- New York Times
- ArtAsiaPacific
- Finishing Line Press
- Swan Scythe Press
- Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts
- Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
- Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Fondation Beyeler
- Tamarind Lithography Workshop
- Galería Peridot
- San Francisco school of the arts
- David Zwirner
- Asheville Art Museum
- Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
- Christie's
- Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc.
- Connaissance des Arts
- Beaux Arts Magazine
- Centre Pompidou
- Disney
- Whitney Museum of American Art
- Biennale de São Paulo
- Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain
- Rijksmuseum
- Nothing Serious gallery
- Élysée Palace
- Museum of Modern Art New York
- The Henry Luce Foundation
Locations
- San Francisco
- California
- United States
- Arcadia
- Santa Anita racetrack
- Rohwer Relocation Center
- Arkansas
- New Mexico
- Milwaukee
- Wisconsin
- North Carolina
- Mexico
- Mexico City
- San José
- Ghirardelli Square
- Union Square
- Embarcadero
- Noe Valley
- Pearl Harbor
- Japan
- Bilbao
- New York
- Basel
- Tolupa
- Los Angeles
- Spain
- Caroline du Nord
- Asheville
- Death Valley
- Dessau
- Germany
- Switzerland
- Toluca
- Santa Anita
- Paris
- France
- Amsterdam
- Netherlands
- Nihonmachi
- Norwalk
- Norwalk, California
- San Francisco, California