Ruth Asawa: the journey from concentration camps to major museums

BilbaoThe Japanese-American artist Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) had every obstacle against her. But she succeeded, becoming one of the most important American sculptors of the second half of the 20th century, as can be seen in the retrospective dedicated to her by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao until September 13, organized by MoMA San Francisco and MoMA New York, in collaboration with the Guggenheim New York. Asawa carved out her own niche with weightless sculptures made of woven wire, evocative of plant and marine forms. These are transparent, porous works. They are very often hung from the ceiling. And an extraordinary feature of her working method was that she integrated it into her family life.

Asawa had a studio at home, but she preferred to work in the living room, next to the kitchen, so she could work while cooking or making a sandwich for some of her six children, who also helped her. "One of her sons told me not to interrupt her if I needed something, but rather that she would often give you wire and you would work while talking to her and telling her what you needed," explains Janet Bishop, chief curator at MoMA San Francisco and curator of the exhibition, along with Cara Manes, associate curator of painting and sculpture at MoMA New York, and Guggenheim Bilbao curator Geaninne Gutiérrez-Guimarães. "Studio practice and family life were completely integrated. She never had a studio outside the home; her home was always her studio, and she did this intentionally," Bishop concludes.

"An artist is not someone special; they are an ordinary person capable of turning ordinary things into something special," said Ruth Asawa. Her work fell into a certain oblivion in the 70s, but regained recognition about twenty years ago. "She was a precursor to minimalism," says Gutiérrez-Guimarães. "Her ideas are as radical as those of Alexander Calder, Naum Gabo, and Gego," she emphasizes. The exhibition, simply titled Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, includes about 250 works, including sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, and documents.

Asawa grew up on a farm in Newark, California, about 27 kilometers southeast of Los Angeles. Her parents were Japanese immigrant farmers and, as a child, Asawa had to combine school tasks with farm work. "This experience was fundamental to what she later became as an artist. From a very early age she developed a very important work ethic that she maintained throughout her life. She believed that every minute we are on Earth we should be doing something and she also developed a great appreciation for nature," explains Bishop.

Later, Asawa and her family fully experienced the impact of World War II in the United States. As a teenager, she was interned in a concentration camp, in retaliation for the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which affected some 120,000 other people of Japanese origin. First they sent her to a concentration camp in Arkansas, and it was then that she began to dedicate herself to art: she took classes with other people who were detained and who were animators from the Disney studios. As she herself said, the fact of being able to draw and find this gateway to art is what allowed her to "maintain hope," says Cara Manes. "It was during this period that she decided to become an artist. It was through this horrific experience that she found her way to art," adds Manes.

The great masters at Black Mountain College

Asawa could not fulfill her desire to become a teacher due to discrimination against Japanese people, but she was able to study for three years at Black Mountain College, where she attended classes by great names such as choreographer Merce Cunningham, architect Richard Buckminster Fuller, and fellow artist Josef Albers. "The university didn't have much money, so we had to use all available resources as students in terms of materials – Bishop recalls –. And Asawa, as we've said, was a hard worker. She cut other students' hair, also worked in the laundry, and couldn't stop working. As her daughter says, she was a bit obsessive. Whenever she had free time, she did something, she created; creation came from within her." The fruit of this creative frenzy can be seen in a drawing made with the stamp used to mark the laundry sheets.

Asawa's career took a turn in the 1980s after she was diagnosed with lupus. The illness led her to focus on drawing, but she didn't stop creating. Specifically, she dedicated herself to drawing the plants and flowers in her garden. "Despite physical deterioration, her creativity remained intense. She often worked with ink, starting from the center and expanding outwards, observing the plants in all their phases," says Manes. "One of the key ideas of her work is interconnection – he adds –: between disciplines, between forms, between moments of her life. A drawing can connect with a sculpture from fifty years earlier. Her artistic philosophy remains coherent and profound over time. As Asawa used to say, to see is to do: the act of looking is also a creative act," Manes recalls. After Bilbao, it will be shown at the Beyeler Foundation in Basel.