An Artist Takes Shape

Ruth Asawa: An Artist Takes Shape

Publisher: Getty Publications

Publication Date: 2024

By Sam Nakahira  Brave, unconventional, and determined, Ruth Asawa let nothing stop her from living a life intertwined with art.  Renowned for her innovative wire sculptures, Japanese American artist Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) was a teenager in Southern California when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II. Japanese Americans on the West Coast were forced into camps. Asawa’s family had to abandon their farm, her father was incarcerated, and she and the rest of her family were sent to a detention center, and later to a concentration camp in Arkansas. Asawa nurtured her dreams of becoming an artist while imprisoned and eventually made her way to the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina.  This graphic biography by Sam Nakahira, developed in consultation with Ruth Asawa’s youngest daughter, Addie Lanier, chronicles the genesis of Asawa as an artist—from the horror of Pearl Harbor to her transformative education at Black Mountain College to building her life in San Francisco, where she would further develop and refine her groundbreaking wire sculptures.  Asawa never sought fame, preferring to work on her own terms: for her, art and life were one. Featuring lively illustrations and a dozen photographs of Asawa’s artwork, this graphic retelling of her young adult years demonstrates the transformative power of making art.  Ages thirteen and up. 

Details

Publisher: Getty Publications

Artist: Ruth Asawa

Publication Date: 2024

ISBN: 9781947440098

Retail: $19.95

Status: Available

Binding: Hardcover

Dimensions: 7 × 9 in | 17.78 × 22.86 cm

Pages: 112

Reproductions: illustrated throughout

Artist and Contributors

Ruth Asawa

American artist, educator, and arts activist Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) is known for her extensive body of wire sculptures that challenge conventional notions of material and form through their emphasis on lightness and transparency. Over the course of more than a half century, Asawa created a cohesive body of sculptures and works on paper that, in their innovative use of material and form, deftly synthesizes a wide range of aesthetic preoccupations at the heart of postwar art in America.

$19.95