M asterfully constructed from countless interlocking loops of metal wire, the biomorphic forms in Ruth Asawa’s Untitled (S.467, Hanging Four-Lobed Continuous Form with a Sphere in the Second Lobe) are breathtaking in their formal complexity and unbridled playfulness. A particularly rare and historic example, Untitled (S.467) was executed in 1951 and hails from Asawa’s most acclaimed and beloved body of work. The sculpture’s mesmerizing lattice of undulating orbs illustrates the artist’s impressively deft understanding of form and space—blurring distinctions between interior and exterior, weight and weightlessness, as well as positive and negative space. Composed of four evenly distinct lobes, the present work is particularly noteworthy for its delicate compositional balance and elegant combination of copper and brass wire that result in a spectacular brilliance. The dexterity of her formal execution—in Robert Storr's words, Asawa was a creator of "exquisite spatial paradoxes"—seen in Untitled (S.467) speaks further to her remarkable capacity to channel the harmonious unity inherent to organic matter for which her artistic practice is renowned ("Ruth Asawa: Sketches of the Cosmos," Ruth Asawa, New York 2018, p. 144).

Born in California to Japanese immigrant farmers, Asawa’s artistic development and achievement are inextricably linked to the racial and political environment of 1940s America. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the sixteen year-old Asawa and her family were separated and forced into internment camps along with thousands of other Japanese Americans. During her incarceration at the Santa Anita racetrack in Arcadia, California and the Rohwer Relocation Center in Arkansas, Asawa took drawing lessons from fellow internees who had previously worked as animators for Walt Disney Studios. Asawa eventually enrolled as an art student at the legendary Black Mountain College in 1946, where, over the next three years, she studied alongside faculty and students that included such luminaries as Willem and Elaine de Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller and, most notably, Josef Albers. Of all her tutors, it was Albers’ emphasis on Bauhaus principles of formalism rooted in materiality, and the assertion of traditional crafts as valid artistic methods that proved to be the generative point of Asawa’s career. As she later recalled, "The lesson taught to us by Albers was to do something with a material which is unique to its properties. The artist must respect the integrity of the material. I realized I could make wire forms interlock, expand, and contract with a single strand because a line can go anywhere, whereas a solid sheet is limited." (the artist quoted in Stephen Dobbs, "Community and Commitment: An Interview with Ruth Asawa," Art Education, vol. 34, no. 5, September 1981, p. 15).

Embodying the artist's technical and conceptual apex, Untitled (S.467) recalls the splendor of forms found in nature through its ever-evolving dynamism: droplets of water, seed pods, and light filtering through a canopy are all evoked. Asawa was acutely attuned to nature throughout her lifetime—she began working on her family farm at the age of six and was taught Zen Buddhism by her parents, which celebrates the stillness and grace of simplicity, symmetry, everyday life and nature. Later, in addition to a lifelong art practice, she would also become a mother of six. These experiences would make her acutely aware of the cycle of life and of biological, organic forms. Moreover, as Curator Helen Molesworth explains, if one were to look at Asawa's formal qualities through the lens of motherhood, we might "begin to consider allusions to cells, embryos, fetuses, and whole human bodies in these forms" ("'San Francisco Housewife and Mother'," Ruth Asawa: Life's Work, St. Louis 2019, p. 41). This pictorial language connects Asawa to the formal explorations and conceptual concerns of a number of the 20th century's most important female artists (especially within their sculptural practices) that include Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Yayoi Kusama, and Lee Bontecou—all of whom grappled with the challenges of being female artists in a male-dominated white world, in addition to sometimes also being wives and mothers who ran households.

Inspired by basket-weaving techniques she observed on a trip to Mexico in 1947 and building on the formalist concepts imparted to her by Albers, 1949 saw Asawa embarking on her ambitious wire works with Untitled (S.467) exemplifying her early vision. To create the bulbous, abstracted hanging sculptures that have come to define her most celebrated output, Asawa embraced the qualities of craftsmanship, perpetuating the Bauhaus ideal whereby there is no hierarchical distinction between fine art and design. Appearing to suspend weightlessly in the air, the resulting graceful lyricism of Untitled (S.467) belies the rigor and discipline required to produce an enigmatic structure that was also painstakingly looped by hand. Asawa’s interlocking loops make up a woven mesh in which forms envelop inner forms, while retaining their visibility within the greater silhouette of the sculpture. Her method was labor-intensive, employing the patient repetition of aggregated shapes. When observed more holistically, these ongoing loops of wire ultimately form a network that reinforce her fascination with the infinite and reflect the importance of collaboration and the communal in her own life. Besides a full time career as both artist and mother, Asawa was heavily engaged in art activism and her local community, co-founding the Alvarado School Arts Workshop in San Francisco in 1968. She would eventually go on to serve on the California Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and become a trustee of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Her sculptures also seem to reflect the inherent duality and interconnectedness of the self and the environment. At nearly five feet, Untitled (S.467) compels the viewer to lose themselves in Asawa's expert manipulation of media, but also the integral space that surrounds it through air, light and shadow. In this way, Asawa's work recalls that of her peer Isamu Noguchi, who also played with positive and negative space to explore form, the infinite, gravity and other formal and metaphysical subjects. As a result, Untitled (S.467) appears to be veritably sketched in the air, reproducing itself dependent on the surrounding light sources through the shadows it casts in its environment. The remarkable manner in which the looping lines interact with light and air, articulating sinuous turns and captivating shadows, attests to the multitudes in Untitled (S.467). It also channels the fluidity inherent to Alexander Calder’s mobiles, which inverted the inherent solidity and groundedness of traditional sculpture, reconceiving the ways in which sculpture can interact with space, air and dimensionality. On this aspect of her work, Asawa remarked: "I liked the idea [of transparency], and it turns out my sculpture is like that. You can see through it... You can show inside and outside, and inside and outside are connected. Everything is connected, continuous." (Ruth Asawa, as quoted in Aruna D'Souza, "Transparency as Other," Ruth Asawa: Life's Work, p. 46).

At the time of Untitled (S.467)'s creation, this approach represented a completely novel form in art: this inventiveness powerfully demonstrates how Asawa "was ahead of her time in understanding how sculptures could function to define and interpret space. This aspect of her work anticipates much of the installation work that has come to dominate contemporary art" (Daniell Cornell quoted in: Ashton Cooper, "Ruth Asawa's Late, Meteoric Rise from Obscurity," BlouinArtinfo, 26 November 2013, online). Viewed in isolation, Asawa's linework coalesces into both a solid surface and permeable vessel; in the context of its installation environment, Untitled (S.467) is a representation that is generative of external representations, creating cobweb facsimiles in the shadows it casts.

By employing distinctly modern and industrial materials like brass and copper wire, Asawa imbues the sensual and organic contours she loops with poetic sensitivity and subtle resilience. In Untitled (S.467), Asawa conjures the strength and dynamism of the natural world with structural clarity and technical finesse: the work’s resulting weightless verticality is an effortless dance with gravity that belies the integrity of its making. A masterwork of modern artistic exploration and meticulously honed craftsmanship, Untitled (S.467, Hanging Four-Lobed Continuous Form with a Sphere in the Second Lobe) epitomizes Asawa’s renowned and resolutely singular contributions to the exploration of spatial abstraction in the twentieth century. Possessing both striking delicateness and profound emotional resonance, Untitled (S.467) stands as a profound testament to Asawa’s ingenuity and ultimately enduring as a wholly original and prescient innovation in Post-war American sculpture.

Artist

Ruth Asawa