Ruth Asawa

David Zwirner is pleased to present a selection of prints by Ruth Asawa. Asawa is renowned for her extensive body of wire sculptures that challenge conventional notions of material and form through their emphasis on lightness and transparency. A group of these works was concurrently on view at Frieze Masters in London.

Like her sculptures, Asawa’s works on paper are often built on simple, repeated gestures that accumulate into complex compositions, typically engaging directly with the natural world and its forms. Plants and flowers are a recurring motif; Asawa drew from life as a means of studying their structure. The works in this Viewing Room were made during Asawa’s 1965 fellowship at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, for which she was recommended by Josef Albers. The two-month fellowship was her first chance to work with established commercial printing processes, and gave her the opportunity to experiment in collaboration with seven master printers to produce more than 50 original lithographs. Among the selection are prints investigating the form and color of succulents, hydrangeas, poppies, nasturtiums, irises, and desert flowers.

Born in rural California, Asawa began to make art while detained in internment camps for Japanese Americans at Santa Anita, California, and Rohwer, Arkansas, where she was sent with her family from 1942 to 1943.