Ruth Asawa (USA, 1926 – 2013) – Art by Women

Ruth Asawa amid her works in 1954. She started using wire after a trip to Mexico in 1947. Credit N.Farbman/Time & Life Pictures

Ruth Aiko Asawa (January 24, 1926 – August 5, 2013) was an American modernist sculptor. Her work is featured in collections at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

Fifteen of Asawa’s wire sculptures are on permanent display in the tower of San Francisco’s de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, and several of her fountains are located in public places in San Francisco.
She was an arts education advocate and the driving force behind the creation of the San Francisco School of the Arts, which was renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in 2010.
In 2020, the U.S. Postal Service honored her work by producing a series of ten stamps that commemorate her well-known wire sculptures. via Wikipedia

Ruth’s identity card that allowed her to leave the camp. It is now part of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery collection.

In the hysteria following the outbreak of the World War II, the United States government feared that Japanese Americans would commit acts of sabotage against their country. Although no such act was ever committed by a Japanese American, some 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in the Western United States were removed from their homes and made to live in internment camps. Of these, almost 80,000 were United States citizens; 40,000 were children. Ruth Asawa was one of these citizen children. read more via Internment

Ruth Asawa (USA, 1926 – 2013)
Untitled (S.165, Hanging Two-Sectioned, Open Windows Form), ca. 1958-60, brass wire, 61 x 40.6 x 40.6 cm.

Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.402, Hanging Two Interlocked Spheres, Each Containing One Sphere that Interlocks with an Outer Half-Sphere Form), 1954, iron wire, 48.3 x 55.9 x 55.9 cm.

Ruth Asawa, Untitled (S.513, Hanging Two Interlocking Hat Forms with Undulating Brims), ca. 1950s | hanging sculpture—copper wire 33 x 40.6 x 40.6 cm.

Ruth Asawa , Untitled (S.387, Hanging Three Separate Layers of Three-Lobed Forms), ca. 1955, hanging sculpture—copper, brass and enameled, copper wire, 83.8 x 34.3 x 34.3 cm. (33 x 13.5 x 13.5 in.)

Untitled (Ruth Asawa kneeling behind looped-wire sculpture), ca. 1957.

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***Untitled (Ruth Asawa)*** by Ruth Asawa
Ceramic, bisque-fired clay
20th C. U.S.A. Ceramic

Ruth Asawa with life masks on the exterior wall of her house. Photo by T.Schmitt
ARTWORK: *Untitled* (LC.012 Wall of Masks), c. 1966–2000. Ceramic, bisque-fired clay. Courtesy David Zwirner

These 233 masks, which originally hung on the exterior of Ruth Asawa’s family home in Noe Valley, have never been shown in their entirety outside their original context. After two years of conservation treatment and careful planning, they were mounted as part of the long-term installation, The Faces of Ruth Asawa, at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.