Ruth Aiko Asawa (January 24, 1926 – August 5, 2013) was an American artist, sculptor and arts educator. She is best known for hanging sculptures made by looping or tying metalwire. She also made drawings, prints, fountains and other works of public art. Much of her later life was spent supporting art education in San Francisco.
Early life
Asawa was born in Norwalk, California. Her parents were immigrants from Japan who worked as farmers. She was the fourth of seven children.
In 1942, during World War II, the United States government forced Asawa and her family from their home because they were Japanese American. Her father was taken away separately. Asawa, her mother and most of her brothers and sisters were first held at the Santa Anita racetrack in California. They were later sent to the Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas.
At Santa Anita, Asawa took drawing lessons from three artists who had worked as animators for Walt Disney Studios. They were also being held at the camp. These lessons helped Asawa begin to think seriously about becoming an artist.
Education
Asawa left Rohwer in 1943 to study at Milwaukee State Teachers College in Wisconsin. She hoped to become an art teacher. However, local schools would not allow her to complete the teaching practice needed for her degree because she was Japanese American.
In 1946, she moved to Black Mountain College in North Carolina. The college encouraged students to work in different kinds of art and to experiment with ordinary materials. Asawa studied with artists and designers including Josef Albers and Buckminster Fuller. She also met architecture student Albert Lanier, whom she later married.
Art
One of Asawa's hanging wire sculptures at the de Young Museum
During a visit to Toluca, Mexico, in 1947, Asawa learned how local craftspeople made baskets by looping wire. At Black Mountain College, she adapted this method to make hanging sculptures. She made shapes inside other shapes with a continuous piece of wire. Because the surfaces were open, light passed through them and created patterns of shadows.
Asawa later developed another method in which she tied pieces of wire together. Many of these sculptures were based on trees, branches and other forms found in nature. She also worked with paper, clay, bronze, ink and printed images. Her work included drawings, prints, folded-paper designs, masks and cast sculptures.
After leaving college, Asawa and Lanier settled in San Francisco in 1949. Her work was first shown at the San Francisco Museum of Art, now called the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, that year. During her lifetime, her work appeared in about thirty exhibitions at the museum.
Public art and education
From the 1960s onward, Asawa made several works for public places. These included fountains and sculptures in San Francisco. She also created the Japanese American Internment Memorial in San Jose, California, which remembers the experiences of Japanese Americans held by the government during World War II.
Asawa believed that children should have opportunities to make art. In 1968, she helped start the Alvarado School Arts Workshop, which brought artists into public schools. She also helped create San Francisco's first public high school centred on the arts in 1982. The school was renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in 2010.
Later recognition
Asawa died in San Francisco on August 5, 2013, at the age of 87.
In 2020, the United States Postal Service issued a group of stamps showing ten of her wire sculptures. In 2025, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opened a large exhibition looking back at her six-decade career. It included more than 300 works and was later shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain.
