Ruth Asawa was born in 1926 in Norwalk, California. In 1942, she and her family were detained through the Japanese American Internment during World War II. Asawa later attended Milwaukee State Teachers College; however, her Japanese heritage impeded her student teaching training, preventing her from fulfilling her degree requirements. Instead, she attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina where she studied with Bauhaus Josef Albers and Buckminster Fuller.

At Black Mountain, she began her experimentation with looped wire sculpture. Between 1950 and 1960, Asawa started showing work in solo and group shows internationally, including shows at the San Francisco Museum of Art and the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Oakland Art Museum, Chicago’s Art Institute, New York’s Whitney and MOMA museums and the Sao Paulo Biennale in Brazil. In the decades that followed, Asawa became increasingly active in the community, on a local and national level.

You can see Asawa’s work all over the United States and worldwide, in exhibitions or as public commissions. February 12th is Ruth Asawa Day in San Francisco. For more information about Asawa’s life and work, please visit www.ruthasawa.com