Ruth Asawa: A Retrospective
“I’m not so interested in the expression of something. I’m more interested in what the material can do. So that’s why I keep exploring,”
“I’m not so interested in the expression of something. I’m more interested in what the material can do. So that’s why I keep exploring,”
Since its establishment in 1956 with a gift of prints from Los Angeles collector Fred Grunwald, the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts has evolved into one of the […]
While the appreciation of Asawa’s work has grown exponentially in the last decade, this retrospective is the first major museum exhibition to fully consider every aspect of the artist’s exquisite, varied, and groundbreaking practice.
Co-curated by Asawa's daughters Aiko Cuneo and Addie Lanier, this inaugural exhibition includes rarely exhibited looped- and tied-wire sculptures for which she is best-known, cast artworks, paperfolds, watercolors, and drawings on paper and copper foil.
Introductions brings together work from students and faculty across the arts department at
Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, featuring artists, designers, makers, and creative thinkers from
Visual Arts, Architecture & Design, and Costume & Fashion Design.
The selection of work on view illustrates Asawa’s exploration of a familiar motif in different materials including wire, paper, plaster, metallic foil, tin, fabric, and more.
The first European retrospective dedicated to Ruth Asawa (1926–2013), the influential American artist of Japanese descent, offers an extraordinary opportunity to experience the ways in which Asawa transformed the simplest of materials into fascinating object, blurring the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, art and craft, action and contemplation.