Description: RUTH ASAWA: A RETROSPECTIVE VIEW Rare 1973 San Francisco Museum of Art Exhibition Catalog Gerald Nordland [Curator]: RUTH ASAWA: A RETROSPECTIVE VIEW. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Art, 1973. First edition. Slim quarto. Thick printed wrappers. 28 pp. 26 black and white images. Wrappers bright and clean with trivial rubbing and edgewear. A nearly fine copy of a scarce catalog. 10 x 10 softcover exhibition catalog organized by the San Francisco Museum of Art, June 29 - August 19, 1973 that then travelled to the California Institute of Technology, October 5 - November 12, 1973. “I was interested in it because of the economy of a line, making something in space, enclosing it without blocking it out. It’s still transparent. I realized that if I was going to make these forms, which interlock and interweave, it can only be done with a line because a line can go anywhere.” — Ruth Asawa From the SFGate Obituary, California sculptor Ruth Asawa dies, published on August 6, 2013: “Ruth Asawa, one of California's most admired sculptors and the first Asian American woman in the nation to achieve recognition in a male-dominated discipline, died Monday night of natural causes at her home in San Francisco. She was 87. “Ms. Asawa's name perhaps will serve as a reminder of the importance of preserving artwork. This year, a proposed Apple Store threatened her early 1970s "Hyatt on Union Square Fountain," on steps between the Hyatt Hotel and a now-closed, adjacent Levi's store. “After furious public protest, the city rejected Apple's plans and told the company to redo them to ensure that the fountain sculpture survives. “Ms. Asawa's other notable public work includes the "Japanese American Internment Memorial" in San Jose and the "Andrea Mermaid Fountain" at Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. In addition, the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, which honored Ms. Asawa with a career retrospective in 2006-07, has dedicated the ground-floor lobby area of its tower to ongoing display of her work. "Ruth Asawa will be remembered for the extraordinary wire sculptures that so beautifully interweave nature and culture," said Timothy Burgard, curator of American art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. He characterized her "as a pioneering post-World War II modernist whose works have transcended the multiple barriers she faced as an Asian American woman artist working with traditional 'craft' materials and techniques. She lived to see all of these confining categories challenged and redefined." “Ms. Asawa's signature works consist of lattices or dendrites of woven or entwined wire, defining volumes almost without mass. Her bronzes take the more robust form of human figures and other images modeled in relief or in the round. Ms. Asawa's place in the history of modern art in California is secure, but the wider art world has been slower to acknowledge it. “That changed abruptly this spring when Christie's auction house in New York presented a sensitively installed exhibition of her wire works, preceding an auction in which a particularly elegant and complex 1960s hanging sculpture by her sold for more than $1.4 million. “In 1982, Ms. Asawa was a founder of what is now called the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, a San Francisco Unified School District arts high school, which is slated for relocation to the Civic Center arts district. Her prestige bolstered successful efforts on the part of the San Francisco Unified School District to retain arts programs when so many other districts eliminated theirs. “Born Jan. 24, 1926, in Norwalk (Los Angeles County), Ms. Asawa was the fourth among seven children of immigrant truck farmers whom state law then prohibited from owning land or applying for citizenship. During childhood, Ms. Asawa did farm work with her family and attended both public school and a "Japanese cultural school," where she learned calligraphy and her parents' native language. Her teachers appreciated her drawing ability. “In 1942, the federal government began to implement the executive order mandating internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast. Ms. Asawa's father was separated for six years from the rest of her family, who were housed initially in the Santa Anita racetrack stables, and eventually at an internment camp in Rohwer, Ark. “Ms. Asawa continued drawing and learned as she could from older internee artists. She completed high school in the camp and won a scholarship to Milwaukee State Teachers College. “Because of anti-Japanese prejudice, Ms. Asawa was unable to obtain mandatory teaching credentials. She instead entered Black Mountain College in North Carolina, an educational experiment that in its brief life span became a hotbed of artistic innovation. It attracted future luminaries such as Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, Franz Kline, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson and Bauhaus exile Josef Albers who, improbably, acted as Ms. Asawa's mentor. “Ms. Asawa left Black Mountain after three years, emboldened to devote her life to art. She had met there, and soon married, architect and designer Albert Lanier (1927-2008), with whom she had six children. Ms. Asawa served on the San Francisco Arts Commission and on the board of trustees of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She received honorary doctorates from San Francisco State University, the San Francisco Art Institute and California College of the Arts.” Please visit my Ebay store for an excellent and ever-changing selection of rare and out-of-print design books and periodicals covering all aspects of 20th-century visual culture. I offer shipping discounts for multiple purchases. Please contact me for details. Payment due within 3 days of purchase.
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