Celebrating Asian American And Pacific Islander Heritage Month: Ruth Asawa
Image: Ruth Asawa, 1957, Photo: Imogen Cunningham
In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, COUPAR celebrates the life of Japanese-American artist Ruth Asawa (1926–2013). During WWII, the California native and her farming family suffered forced internment at Santa Anita Racetrack and Rohwer Relocation Center. Among the other detainees in Santa Anita were Japanese American artists and animators from the Walt Disney Studios. They offered art classes to the young detainees, which the teenage Asawa took. She learned to draw and dream from professionals who worked on Fantasia and Snow White while living in deplorable conditions of converted horse stalls and makeshift barracks.
Ruth Asawa, Untitled, Watercolor on paper, 19 3/4 × 16 in., c. 1948–49, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
After the war, Asawa earned a scholarship to Black Mountain College in North Carolina. The progressive and experimental art school was known for its avant-garde faculty and emphasis on interdisciplinary learning. Asawa studied with artist Josef Albers, architect Buckminster Fuller, choreographer Merce Cunningham, and mathematician Max Dehn, who taught "Geometry for Artists." During the school's Summer work-study program in Toluca, Mexico, Asawa saw artisans weaving utilitarian wire baskets to transport eggs. She learned the craft of hand looping metal wire, eventually developing the technique into her ethereal, transparent hanging sculptures that she is synonymous with.
Image: Drawings and Sculptures by Ruth Asawa at the de Young Museum, 1960. Photo: Paul Hassel
While at Black Mountain, Asawa met her husband, architect Albert Lanier. They married in 1949, and Fuller designed her wedding ring, a polished riverstone wrapped by silver bands to form interlocking "A's." Lanier found work in San Francisco, and the couple settled in Noe Valley, where Asawa balanced making art with raising six children. While she faced marginalization in the art community as an Asian American woman, photographer Imogen Cunningham championed her, documenting the visionary artist; this led to Asawa's breakthrough, with her works exhibited in galleries and museums, sought by private collectors and for public commissions.
To learn more about Ruth Asawa and her legacy, the SFMOMA is currently exhibiting the first posthumous retrospective of her six-decade career: Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, April 5–September 2, 2025.
