Ruth Asawa: Life's Work

Ruth Asawa: Life’s Work, co-published by Yale University Press, is a fully illustrated catalogue, including essays by Aruna D’Souza, Helen Molesworth, and Tamara H. Schenkenberg, and several installation images of Asawa’s work at the Pulitzer.

Throughout her long and prolific career American artist Ruth Asawa (1926–2013) developed innovative sculptures in wire, a medium she explored through increasingly complex forms using craft-based techniques she learned while traveling in Mexico in 1947. In 1949, after studying at Black Mountain College, Asawa moved to San Francisco and created dozens of wire works, among them an iconic bronze fountain—the first of many public commissions—for the city’s Ghirardelli Square.