This exhibition represents a retrospective of this Nisei artist's enduring and richly varied career. Born on a truck farm in Southern California, Asawa was incarcerated at Rohwer concentration camp in Arkansas during World War II. In the 1940s, she attended Black Mountain College, the famous experimental art school in North Carolina.
The Sculpture of Ruth Asawa begins with her earliest sculptures, drawings, and paintings created at Black Mountain College, and highlights the signature wire sculptures that formed her visual vocabulary of looped and tied open forms, which she continued to experiment with throughout her career. Organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, this exhibition of sculptures and works on paper recognizes one of the most important women artists of the century.